The ASTRA system is owned and operated by SES ASTRA (originally Société Européenne des Satellites), which began as a private company incorporated in Luxembourg and trading under a 25-year renewable franchise agreement with the Grand Duchy, which retains a 20 percent interest. Founded in March 1985 with the backing of private commercial interests all over Europe, SES ASTRA has headquarters at the Château de Betzdorf in Luxembourg. From there, it uplinks TV and radio signals to the orbiting satellite craft that constitute the system. The company’s revenue is generated largely by leasing satellite transponders–effectively the equivalent of channel slots–to broadcasting organizations that pay annual rentals reputedly as high as £5 million per transponder. In 2001, there were as many as 176 separate transponders on the system, which continues to expand with the addition of further craft. Despite the challenges of economic recession, media deregulation, audience fragmentation, and the rise of the Internet, SES ASTRA has found no shortage of potential customers, with transponder availability on each new satellite subject to heavy demand from broadcasters willing to gamble high investment costs and short-term unprofitability for healthier returns later.

The ASTRA satellite system began as an analog-only enterprise but has progressively moved over to digital technology. The very first satellite, ASTRA 1A, was launched in December 1988 from the European Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, aboard an Ariana 4 rocket. It became operational in February 1989, 35,975 kilometers above the equator as its geostationary orbital position of 19.2 degrees east longitude. This was the first commercial European satellite specifically dedicated to television and radio transmission. The system was subsequently augmented by the launch of ASTRA 1B in March 1991, while 1C followed in May 1993, 1D in November 1994, and 1E in October 1995, all co-located at the same orbital position and with an active life span of 10 to 12 years. The “footprint,” or geographical universe, of this satellite constellation extends from Iceland and Norway in the north to coastal Morocco, Sardinia, and Belgrade in the south and from the Canary Islands in the west to Warsaw and Budapest in the east, with some reception possible even as far east as Helsinki.

ASTRA 1D inaugurated a significant new phase of technological development, for it was the first satellite in the system capable of operating in the Broadcast Satellite Service (BSS) frequency band reserved for digital transmissions. As such, it provided capacity for the first European digital test transmission conducted in collaboration with key hardware manufacturers and programmers. Additional satellites carrying digital capability were progressively added to the system–1F in 1996, 1G in 1997, and 1H in 1999–with the initial series of satellites co-located at 19.2 degrees east, due for completion with the launch of 1K in 2002. Meanwhile, SES ASTRA had begun to open up new orbital slots with a second series of powerful broadcasting satellites: ASTRA 2A was launched into position at 28.2 degrees east in August 1998, to be followed in September 2000 by 2B, in December 2000 by 2D, and in June 2001 by the delayed 2C, bringing the system up to a total of 12 satellites. A third orbital slot at 23.5 degrees east was used for the inauguration of the third series, with the launch of ASTRA 3A in 2002.

The available services are accessed via one of three methods of delivery, the most visible being an individual, direct-to-home dish antenna (DTH), which can be fixed or motorized and which, for successful reception in the footprint’s central belt, can be as small as 60 centimeters in diameter for analog signals or even smaller for digital ones. Alternatively, in the case of viewers in multioccupancy dwellings, reception is via communal, satellite master antenna systems (SMATV). Many other viewers, including a large proportion in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, receive satellite-originated signals relayed over cable networks. 

A major factor in the early success of SES ASTRA was Rupert Murdock’s 1988 decision to become ASTRA’s first commercial client taking four transponders initially on ASTRA 1A for his incipient Sky Television Service (subsequently renamed British Sky Broadcasting, or BSkyB), aimed principally at English-speaking audiences in the United Kingdom and western Europe. A considerable number of German broadcasting interests also migrated early to ASTRA’s evolving system, which was soon enabling diverse program services in a wide variety of languages, ushering in a new era of themed private television and radio channels as alternatives to the general entertainment models commonly associated with terrestrial broadcasting. Many of these channels are transmitted in encrypted or scrambled form, available only to contracted subscribers possessing the necessary decoding device. Movies, sports, music, news, children, documentary, nostalgia, and shopping channels are the most consistently popular, while a large number of “adult” channels broadcast late at night.

Networks and program providers were quick to respond to the digital delivery options presented by SES ASTRA in the 1990s. In November 1994, the profitable French subscription channel Canal Plus concluded a long-term agreement with SES ASTRA, covering six transponders for digital transmission of the channel’s program bundle to the various European-language markets. In 1998, BSkyB began its Sky Digital service via the second series of ASTRA satellites while beginning progressively to phase out analog transmissions. Hundreds of television and radio channels can be accessed via the BSkyB Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), made possible by the compression ratio available under ASTRA’s digital technology. In addition to regular subscription offerings, pay-per-view and interactive program services have become commonplace, while new program propositions (including the British Broadcasting Corporation’s [BBC’s] new digital channels) continuously vie for audience attention.

Being first to market has helped SES ASTRA achieve a position of increasing dominance, to the extent that it has developed into a truly global media player. In 1998, the company completed its initial offering on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. A year later, it acquired a 34 percent stake in AsiaSat and went on to purchase extensive holdings in Nordic Satellite and Embratel Satellite, thereby extending its reach to the Scandinavian and Latin American markets. In 2001, SES ASTRA combined with GE Americom to create a worldwide satellite operation and restructured itself as a wholly owned company of SES GLOBAL. The company’s activities have diversified with the rapid development of broadband Internet and positioned development of broadband Internet and positioned it at the forefront of multimedia by satellite. Its ASTRA-NET platform enables content-rich data to be delivered at high speeds to personal computers in businesses and homes, allowing Internet service providers to offer conventional Internet access via existing digital satellite antennas. Another SES ASTRA project, the Broadband Interactive System, provides send-and-receive capabilities for data, video, and audio at speeds up to 2 megabits. In less than two decades, a modest Luxembourg-based private company has successfully pioneered the distribution of nonterrestrial television across Europe and evolved into a public multimedia enterprise of international significance.