SAT@ONCE SERVICE "POWERED BY ASTRA" PASSES 13.000 REGISTERED USERS

New Internet-based multimedia service now freely available by satellite throughout Europe

The European Space Agency and SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company (Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG, Frankfurt Stock Exchange: SDSL), jointly with the CSP research centre in Turin, Italy, are delighted to announce the 13.000th registered user of Sat@Once, a satellite multicast Internet extension "powered by ASTRA" as of September 16th 2002, less than 6 months after the launch.

The Sat@Once free of charge service distributes, by satellite and at high speed (2 Mbps), most popular parts of the most popular web sites and discussion groups ("newsgroups") from the Internet. The popularity of these contents are determined by "votes" coming directly from the audience of Sat@Once users. The local PC automatically determines and filters among the huge amount of broadcasted data (20 GB a day) what is interesting to its owner, doing this in total privacy.

A dedicated receiver software, available for free download at http://www.sat@once.csp.it, together with a standard DVB-Data equipment, are all that are needed for a PC user to enjoy this new ASTRA satellite extension to the Internet. The contents distributed come from the Internet and can be viewed with the standard players: Internet Explorer™, Flash™, Real Player™, Windows Media Player™, QuickTime Player™, etc. The missing links that are not sent by satellite can be retrieved seamlessly using a classical Internet connection (modem, ISDN, ADSL, etc.).

The advantage for the web authors is a better exposure to the market since the most popular pages, quickly available, will lead the interested users to the more specific parts of their site.

The advantages for the web advertisers are a higher surf rate from the users and a faster display of their ad banners since most of the contents already came by satellite.

The advantage for the users is a better Internet experience with the most popular contents available at high speed, closest to their private preferences and renewed every day at no recurrent cost.

The Sat@Once service is operated by SES ASTRA and the CSP, and jointly financed by SES ASTRA and the European Space Agency as part of the ARTES-3 programme.

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