SES WORLD SKIES, a division of SES S.A. has announced that it had entered into a multi-year, multi-transponder agreement that covers all 12 Ku-band transponders on the India beam of the SES-7 satellite.

The capacity on SES-7 will be used to support the growth and expansion of India's thriving DTH market.

Deepak Mathur, SES WORLD SKIES Vice President of Sales for South Asia and the Middle East, said: "SES provides significant satellite capacity for the explosive growth in the Indian media, DTH and telecommunications industries.

SES currently supplies capacity to the Indian market via four of its satellites NSS-12, NSS-6, NSS-11 and SES-7, and we are committed to meet the growing demand requirements of the Indian DTH market, which is the fastest growing DTH market in the world with an estimated 30 million subscribers and is projected to overtake the US as the largest DTH market".

SES-7 provides incremental Ku-band capacity at the well-established orbital location of 108.2 degrees East, driving the growth of DTH and enterprise services across South Asia and the Asia Pacific region.

The satellite, formerly known as ProtoStar II, has the potential of reaching 400 million households across Asia. Built by Boeing and launched in May 2009, the spacecraft has an expected service life of 15 years and carries 22 high-power physical Ku-band transponders on switchable beams and 10 S-band transponders.

The S-band payload is fully utilized by MCI Indovision, the market-leading DTH platform operator in Indonesia. Co-located with NSS-11, SES-7 strengthens SES WORLD SKIES' growing video neighborhood in North East Asia offering expansion opportunities and facilitating in-orbit back up offerings to established neighborhoods in the Philippines and Hong Kong.