United Group to consolidate DTH platforms

South-eastern European pay TV and broadband provider United Group has unveiled plans to consolidate its DTH services across the region into a single platform by sending an RFI to a group of satellite operators for satellite capacity to support its plans. 

United Group operates three DTH services through its Nova, Total TV, and Vivacom brands across eight countries ­– Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia – reaching an overall audience of about 40 million people.

United Group said the move to consolidate the DTH services into a single platform would allow it to take advantage of new transmission standards and compression technologies to maximise the efficiency of its operation.

It said the consolidation would also facilitate the introduction of new, higher quality and innovative services for TV subscribers.

The current configuration of United Group’s DTH operations includes multiple satellite operators, multi-orbital positions, older compression technology, and an amalgam of receiving antennas of varying sizes.

The consolidation and reorganisation of services will involve the selection of a single satellite orbital position, a unified set-top and conditional access system, a one-size television receive-only system – i.e. antenna – and a single teleport to uplink the content.

Srdjan Djurdjevic CEO of United Cloud, the innovation centre of United Group, said: “Consolidating all TV services in a single platform is much more than a business decision. It is further proof of our commitment to continue evolving next generation services, through next generation satellite possibilities”.