After nearly a four-month delay required to adjust its antennae the better to serve eastern Europe, Eutelsat II will be launched by the Ariane rocket on July 9. Jean Grenier, director general of Eutelsat, says the expansion of Eutelsat’s coverage will enable the union of Europe’s broadcast networks next January, when western Europe’s Eurovision network will fuse with eastern Europe’s Intervision. At that time, one satellite will serve about 40 countries in western and eastern Europe, North Africa and the near East. This new satellite will enable us to serve 416m residents in of Western Europe and 316m in Eastern Europe, says Giuliano Berretta, commercial director for Eutelsat. Berretta highlights the explosion of the organisation’s multipoint satellite multiservice system service. The service, which enables customers to establish office links at between 64Kbps and 2Mbps, counted 1,250 units of utilisation in 1990. Last year, says Eutelsat, that number mushroomed into 1.9m for the whole of Europe, and current predictions say that the number will reach 3.5m by the end of this year. The satellite multisystem service constituted 8.2% of Eutelsat’s business last year, generating almost $25.9m business.
