MUMBAI: Television New Zealand (TVNZ) has announced that later this year TVNZ Satellite Services will quit the global occasional use satellite delivery industry.

TVNZ Satellite Services has provided satellite carriage services to the international broadcast community in Asia, Africa for over a decade.

TVNZ issued a release stating that it would exit the industry after ensuring that existing obligations to its customers are met. It is committed for the remainder of this year. This includes providing programme services for the upcoming Athens Olympic Games in August.

In conjunction with TVNZ production, TVNZ Satellite Services will provide 15 channels of Olympics coverage comprising multilateral and unilateral carriage services to clients in Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

This service is a 50 per cent increase on the acclaimed solution that TVNZ had conceived for Sydney 2000. TVNZ will outsource its satellite carriage requirements once TVNZ Satellite Services has ceased trading.

Whilst subject to both choice of supplier and negotiation, this is expected to cost substantially less that would have been the case in previous years due to the extensive changes that have occurred in the market. TVNZ will continue to be well positioned to develop unilateral carriage solutions for major events with which it is associated in the future.