SES S.A. has announced a record uptake of its occasional use satellite capacity during the two-day US election period of November 6 and 7.

SES customers including the EBU on behalf of Eurovision, Telenor, Arqiva, Telemundo, Media Broadcast, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, Fox News, Encompass Digital Media, CNBC, MSNBC and many others used 16 different SES satellites for an approximate number of 1800 bookings in order to cover the US elections and to dispatch reports to TV stations all over the world.

The SES satellites AMC-9, SES-1, AMC-1, and SES-2 were prime carriers of election coverage in the Americas, as were ASTRA 3B, NSS-7, SES-4 and NSS-806 internationally. All available occasional use Ku-band capacity in the domestic US arc was fully booked, and due to the enormous demand SES brought into use an inclined orbit satellite, AMC-5, to help broadcasters who were unable to find capacity at the last minute.

Samantha McCloskey, Vice-President Global Occasional Use at SES, commented: "The demand for SES occasional use satellite capacity to cover the final showdown between President Barak Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney was phenomenal - and truly global! SES satellites carried live election coverage across the world as we registered over 1500 individual accesses from TV stations.

"I would like to thank our customers for entrusting SES with their live coverage, as well as all SES staff who ensured flawless, high-quality transmissions to every corner of the earth with more than 1,200 MHz of satellite capacity simultaneously in use for election coverage at one point."