Intelsat Provides Latin America Programmers Fully Managed Video Solutions for 2008 Olympics

Intelsat, the only global satellite operator to provide coverage of every Olympic Games since 1968, is currently offering transmission support for Latin American rightsholders and non-rightsholders of the Beijing Summer Games, delivering more than 12,000 hours of live coverage and recorded highlights to the region. Programmers include Globosat Programadora Ltda., ESPN Channels in Brazil, Organizacion de Telecomunicaciones Iberoamericanas (OTI), Terra Networks Brasil SA, and Televisa S.A. de C.V.

When the Olympic athletes from Argentina, Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico, and Panama stepped onto the podium in Beijing to receive their gold medals, millions of viewers throughout most of Latin America were able to watch, thanks to the Intelsat transmission services provided to these programmers.

For Globosat Programadora Ltda. and ESPN Channels in Brazil, Intelsat is providing a fully managed network solution. Live programming originating from the International Broadcasting Center (IBC) in Beijing is uplinked to Intelsat s IS-8 satellite located at 166 degrees east. Intelsat s Napa, CA, teleport facility downlinks the programming content. From there, the content travels via Intelsat s fiber network to Intelsat s Atlanta, GA, teleport, where it is uplinked to Intelsat s satellites for distribution throughout the region.

With a dedicated operations team on-site, Intelsat also is managing the encoding, compression, multiplexing, and conditional access from China. In addition, Intelsat is managing the reception of Satellite Newsgathering contribution feeds for Globosat and the network program return from Brazil for ESPN.

Intelsat is providing OTI, which is working in conjunction with Televisa S.A. de C.V., IS-8 capacity, a dedicated HD channel, program downlinking at Intelsat s Napa teleport, and encoding and compression at Intelsat s Atlanta teleport. Once OTI receives the programming, it distributes the Olympics to 44 broadcasters in 19 Latin American countries.

Terra Brasil, the leading Brazilian Internet company, is using Intelsat capacity on the Intelsat 3R satellite located at 315 degrees east and teleports in Europe, including Intelsat s Fuchsstadt, Germany, facility to distribute 12 channels of Olympic programming throughout Brazil. Once the content is downlinked at Terra Brasil s facility, the service provider streams that programming on the Internet via its interactive Web portal and provides mobile users the capability to view the Olympic events on their handheld devices.

For Televisa, Intelsat is providing dedicated fiber services from Beijing to Mexico City, used to backhaul programming for its channels in Mexico.