United Group, the leading telecommunications and entertainment provider in Southeastern Europe, is pleased to announce that it has achieved the next step in consolidating all Direct To Home (DTH) services across the region. Eutelsat Group has been selected as the single future satellite operator for satellite capacity in this consolidation effort.

This transition to the next-generation DTH platform, a single operator and its two satellites at two orbital positions is expected to be completed by the end of 2025. The consolidation will also include a unified STB and CAS, a one-size TVRO, and a Teleport to uplink the content.

This move will extend the next-generation United Group’s DTH services to an audience of 40 million people through Telemach, NOVA, Bulsatcom, VIVACOM, SBB and Total TV in 8 countries (Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia).

The consolidation and reorganization of the Group’s DTH services will empower the Group to leverage new transmission standards and compression technologies, expand transmission capacities, support more channels, increase quality, and enable innovative services for TV subscribers such as channel aggregation.

Željko Batistić, VP Technology of United Group, stated: “We are proud to be taking the high quality of our TV offering to a new level. This transition is crucial to maximise our audience reach across our market footprint, deliver an unrivalled content line-up and continue to develop our next generation services. We are delighted to partner with Eutelsat, who offers us the best and most compliant technical solution to meet our needs.”

Laurence Delpy, President of the Video Business Unit of Eutelsat Group added: “We are honoured that United Group, has placed its confidence in Eutelsat for this important strategic initiative, leveraging two of our leading video neighbourhoods, 16° East and HOTBIRD. As well as reinforcing our long-standing collaboration with one of our key customers in the region, this agreement showcases the ongoing relevance of satellite in addressing the evolving needs of our broadcast clients and confirms Eutelsat as the premier operator covering the region, reaching 7 out of 10 satellite homes.”

The HOTBIRD satellites are currently reaching 130 million homes across Europe, including almost all cable networks in the region. Additionally, the Eutelsat 16A satellite provides over 600 TV channels in a variety of languages to over 25 million homes in Central and Eastern Europe.

With this DTH consolidation, United Group is reaffirming its commitment to streamlined operations efficiency and evolving next-generation services through future-proof satellite possibilities.