(EMAILWIRE.COM, September 13, 2004 ) Betzdorf/Vienna/Amsterdam -- SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company (Euronext Paris, Luxembourg and Frankfurt stock exchanges: SESG) and ORF today announced at the International Broadcasting Convention IBC 2004 in Amsterdam, the signing of a long-term agreement on the use of additional ASTRA transponder capacity by Austria's leading public broadcaster.

ORF will start utilizing the additional transmission capacity on ASTRA’s orbital position of 19.2° East in 2004. At the same time, the existing contracts between ORF and SES ASTRA have been extended. The agreement further consolidates a mutually beneficial partnership that has been in place for many years.

Andreas Gall, Technical Director of ORF, commented: "With the extension of our transponder capacity we have, on the one hand, laid the foundation for providing our TV viewers and radio audiences with best-quality programs and improvements to current services for years to come.

Furthermore, with these new transmission capacities we can extend our role as a service provider for other TV, radio and data suppliers. With our existing know-how we can provide a full service offer for these clients - from the encryption and the up-linking to the transmission itself."

Ferdinand Kayser, President and CEO of SES ASTRA, stated: "We are very pleased about this extension of our cooperation with such a renowned public broadcasting company as ORF. The expanded product range offered by our longstanding partner will further enhance the programming choice available from Europe's most popular orbital position of 19.2°East."

For further information please contact:

Yves Feltes
Press Relations, SES ASTRA
Tel. 352 710 725 311
Yves.Feltes@ses-astra.com
www.ses-astra.com


Georg Koder
Technical Direction, ORF
Tel. 43 1 87878 14 123
Georg.Koder@orf.at
www.orf.at



About SES ASTRA www.ses-astra.com
The ASTRA Satellite System is the leading Direct-to-Home satellite system in Europe, delivering services to more than 94 million Direct-to-Home and cable households. The ASTRA satellite fleet currently comprises 13 satellites, transmitting in excess of 1100 analogue and digital television and radio channels as well as multimedia and Internet services. ASTRA’s two prime orbital positions for DTH (Direct-To-Home) services are 19.2° East and 28.2° East. Professional services such as Direct-to cable (DTC), Satellite Newsgathering (SNG) and Occasional Use are offered from the orbital positions of 23.5°/24.2° East and 5.2° East.

SES ASTRA is an SES GLOBAL company (Euronext Paris, Luxembourg and
Frankfurt stock exchanges: SESG). SES GLOBAL wholly owns two
market-leading satellite operators, SES ASTRA in Europe, and SES AMERICOM
in the US. The Company also holds strategic participations in AsiaSat in Asia, Star One and Nahuelsat in Latin America, and NSAB in Europe. Via its WORLDSAT subsidiary it provides unparalleled connections to the premier regional satellite fleets of these SES GLOBAL partners. Americom Government Services provides network solutions and bandwidth to the US government and its contractors. SES GLOBAL can provide outstanding satellite communications solutions via a fleet of 40 satellites across the globe. In addition, SES GLOBAL is a shareholder in ORBCOMM, a
provider of wireless data communications services through a low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite network, and in satellite technology companies Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. and ND Satcom. SES GLOBAL is also a founding shareholder in SATLYNX, a Luxembourg-based joint venture with Gilat and Alcatel Space, which has created an unrivalled portfolio of reliable and cost-efficient two-way satellite broadband service solutions to enterprises/corporates, small office/home office (SOHO) users and
local communities all over Europe. Additional info on SES GLOBAL at:
www.ses-global.com




About ORF www.orf.at
ORF, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, is an independent public media enterprise, which has the status of a foundation under public law since 1 January 2002. In compliance with the public mandate under the ORF Act, ORF offers a tri-medial network of services: Television, radio and program-associated online services.

The ORF operates its own transmission network and has the terrestrial technical coverage of about 95% of the Austrian territory for its TV and Radio programs. In addition, since 2000 all ORF channels are also available via the digital satellite bouquet ORF DIGITAL.


All ORF Radio- and TV-channels as well as the ORF Teletext are transmitted via digital ASTRA satellite at 19,2° East. For copyright reasons television signals of the two 24-hour TV-programs, namely ORF 1 and ORF 2, as well as regional television program windows in the nine Federal States, have to be transmitted encoded. For reception of the encoded digital signals a special smartcard – the ORF DIGITAL-SAT-Card - is required.


Since 2000 ORF encodes in Betacrypt 1. In 2003 ORF decided to use the CryptoWorks system for secure encryption of the ORF TV content.


ORF DIGITAL uses Astra’s satellite transponder capacities and provides surplus capacity to suppliers of TV-/Radio-programs or data transfer services. ORF offers customized transmission services, unlimited in time and, depending on the requirements, un- or encoded.

Contact Information:
SES ASTRA
Joseph Nchor
Tel:
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