The city of Rio de Janeiro will once again be the location for the latest in the GVF-EMP Oil & Gas Communications Conference series as it launches into its 2012 global program.  Held in association with Harris CapRock, Intelsat, RigNet, Hughes, Telespazio, KVH, C-COM Satellite Systems, and with special thanks to Petrobras, ‘Oil & Gas Communications Brazil 2012: 21st Century Digital Oilfield & Gasfield Imperatives Onshore, Offshore, and in Deepwater’ will take place 25th & 26th April 2012 at the Windsor Barra Hotel.

ITU’s upcoming ITU Telecom World 2012 event will take place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) from 14-18 October 2012. The event, which follows the format pioneered at World 2011, will see interactive debate, networking and knowledge-sharing placed firmly at the center of an influential discussion agenda.

by Virgil Labrador, Editor-in-Chief

The satellite industry will continues to grow in the coming years albeit at a more modest pace.  This was the consensus  among senior satellite industry executives speaking at the Satellite 2012 Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C. and Cabsat/Satellite MENA 2012 in Dubai, UAE held last month.  There are some concerns with the developing economic crisis in Europe, where three of the four major satellite operators are based, but the mood is decidedly bullish.

NSR’s Oil and Gas via Satellite, 2nd Edition report. released today, finds the Oil & Gas satcom market to remain lucrative over the long-term as bandwidth needs rise worldwide and emerging Oil & Gas markets increase their requirements. Traditional Oil & Gas markets such as the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico are now increasingly complemented by growing satcom demand in Asia, Latin America and the Indian & Pacific Oceans.

BroadcastAsia2012 International Conferencereturns with an impressive line-up of over 80 reputed industry speakers to deliberate on the most critical issues facing broadcasters today. Running from 19 to 22 June 2012 at the Suntec Convention Centre, the conference agenda foretells the ‘reinvention’ of the broadcast industry as content is re-purposed towards viewers who have become increasingly more mobile and who view content on various devices. Broadcasters are forced to reckon with this fact and gear up to cater to this growing trend.

Euroconsult, said that global budgets for space programs have reached a plateau of roughly $70 billion, confirming a slowdown in expansion experienced by the space industry for the last 10 years. According to Euroconsult's new report "Profiles of Government Space Programs: Analysis of 60 Countries & Agencies," Space programs received a short-term boost in recent years from several governments to counter the economic crisis. However, they must now undergo even more stringent budget constraints exemplified by the European public debt crisis and the U.S. Budget Control Act of 2011.

Satellite has become the leading TV infrastructure in Europe, ahead of terrestrial and cable reception according to the annual Satellite Monitor study presented by SES. Approximately 84 million European households have satellite (Direct-to-Home, DTH) as their primary TV reception mode, an increase of 22 percent over the last four years. In the same period, terrestrial TV lost nearly 16 million homes, while cable lost over 2 million. IPTV – the TV distribution over tele-communication networks in IP format – has grown from a very low level to some 16 million households.

IP&TV World Forum 2012 has been hailed a success, with more than 7,163 visitors filling the halls at London’s Olympia last week. The event, which has been rebranded to TV Connect for 2013, saw a ten per cent increase on last year’s attendee numbers and fuelled the debate on the converging TV market, further strengthening its position as the global platform for this dynamic market.

As BT and Virgin Media start to build scale in premises passed and customers sign to their superfast broadband services, some of the UK’s alternative network operators are beginning to find their niche. Although not all altnets will be successful, there are circumstances in which their varied and localised approaches look set to bring superfast broadband to individual communities that have often been struggling with access to even the most basic of broadband services.

This week’s CASBAA India Forum mapped out the direction of the multichannel TV industry across India’s market of 120 million cable TV subscribers. Almost 200 delegates, speakers and media were on hand to discuss the most important opportunities emerging from the ongoing digital deployments.