India boasts a US$7 billion multichannel TV market yet only 60% of the country's vast population owns a television. To addresses pertinent issues in the Indian satellite and broadcast market, the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) is holding its annual India Forum at the Shangrila Hotel in New Delhi on March 20, 2012.

Despite  the ongoing impact of the Arab Spring protests and a dramatic re-ordering of political affairs still reverberating, the Middle East region remains a key growth area for commercial satellite industry.

This was the assessment of Gordon McMillan, Director of Government Services for global satellite network provider Inmarsat, who projected that the global government and military communications will rise to US$9 billion by 2018 with the Middle East becoming a key growth region for the commercial satellite industry because of the exponential demand for greater bandwidth.

by Martin Jarrold

London, February 1, 2012--Taking place on the second (29thFebruary) and third (1stMarch) days of CABSAT 2012, at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Center (DICEC), is GVF MENASAT @ CABSAT, which this year will comprise the Satellite Interference Mitigation Forum, and the Satellite Markets & Services Summit.

The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) has released a powerful first-of-its-kind reach and frequency analysis of the definable returns on media investment in multichannel TV advertising. Commissioned by CASBAA and executed by global media agency Universal McCann, the study measures the benefits of allocating variable percentages of a US$1.75m TV budget on multichannel TV and Free-to-Air (FTA) in seven key Asia-Pacific markets: Australia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

VSAT operator service revenues grew by 14 per cent to $5.2 billion globally in 2011 according to the 12th Edition of he COMSYS VSAT Report. The VSAT Report is the result of over twelve months of research, involving site visits and interviews with companies from Australia to Argentina and from Pakistan to Peru.

Key findings of the report include:

Indonesia's pay-TV market has crossed the 2 million subscription mark, and growth is accelerating. Innovative pricing strategies, higher quality content and new advertising opportunities are driving this expansion. It's a market with plenty of room to grow with new players entering, but competition could be tough. This will be the focus of a forthcoming one-day seminar organized by CASBAA at the Hotel Mulia Senayan in Jakarta on February 29, 2012.

Reports indicate that Iran in the "near future" will start enriching uranium deep inside a mountain to conduct sensitive atomic activities at an underground site for better protection against enemy attacks. The U.S. and Israel are not ruling out strikes against Iran if diplomacy fails to resolve the dispute.

High-quality marine VSAT terminal deployments are being facilitated through the collaboration of three leading industry organizations on a global online training program. The Global VSAT Forum (GVF), Sea Tel, and SatProf have announced that they will jointly launch a web-based training platform at www.gvf.org/training that enables faster, more cost-effective delivery of operation and installation training for personnel who either utilize or deploy Sea Tel marine VSAT terminals.

According to the GSM Association (GSMA), mobile penetration in the Asia Pacific will reach a landmark three billion connections in Q1 2012, nearly two years earlier than projected. More importantly, by 2015, the region is expected to reach 4.1 billion connections, growing at twice the rate of Europe and North America, and will account for 40% of mobile data traffic worldwide.

Fuelled by new smartphones, apps and services consumer demand for mobile data is accelerating beyond expectations, finds a new report from Arieso. Following a similar study in 2010, Arieso’s new analysis reveals that so-called ‘extreme’ users are becoming even more extreme, with 1% of subscribers now consuming HALF of all downloaded data. One thing is clear: the capacity issues plaguing mobile operators around the world will worsen in 2012.