SES ASTRA and NEWS Equipe join forces for occasional use market

SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company (Luxembourg and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges: SESG) and NEWS Equipe, the Dutch-German provider of SNG (Satellite News Gathering) services and facilities, have decided to join forces to develop the occasional use market in the Benelux and the German speaking countries. The cooperation agreement will be officially signed on Saturday 13 September at 2 PM on the ASTRA stand (Hall 1, stand 269) at the IBC Exhibition in Amsterdam.

As part of the cooperation, SES ASTRA will offer occasional use satellite capacity on ASTRA 1A and ASTRA 3A, while NEWS Equipe will provide services for production, editing and uplinking. The cooperation between SES ASTRA and NEWS Equipe will make it possible to meet the growing market demand for professional and affordable occasional use solutions for sports, news and business events. In addition, customers will have the convenience of having a single point of contact, which allows for cost-efficient and speedy handling of the service provisioning.

Auke Smit, Managing Director of NEWS Equipe says: "ASTRA has a long-standing reputation of quality and reliability. Especially for the occasional use business, this is an absolute must. Since ASTRA's service offering is fully complementary to ours, the cooperation allows us to offer a truly 'best-of-both worlds' solution to our customers."

Alexander Oudendijk, SES ASTRA's Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing states: "The occasional use market increasingly demands high quality and cost-efficient end-to-end solutions. The cooperation between SES ASTRA and NEWS Equipe is designed to meet these requirements. SES ASTRA decided to join forces with NEWS Equipe because of its high quality of service, its state-of-the-art SNG trucks and the reliable, customer-oriented way of doing business."

Note for the editor

From 14 to 16 September an ASTRA@IBC program will be broadcast Free-to-Air via ASTRA 1G ('ASTRA Vision', 12551.50 MHz ). The program will start at 2 PM and will be repeated during the afternoon. The program will include a report from the ASTRA stand at IBC including the contract signature with NEWS Equipe as well as interviews (in English) with both Alexander Oudendijk, SVP Sales & Marketing at SES ASTRA and Auke Smit, Managing Director of NEWS Equipe.

For further information, please contact:

Yves Feltes Senior Manager, Press Relations Tel +352 710 725 311 Yves.Feltes@ses-global.com www.ses-astra.com

About SES ASTRA

http://www.ses-astra.com

The ASTRA Satellite System is Europe's leading Direct-to-Home satellite system, delivering television, radio as well as multimedia and Internet services to more than 92 million Direct-to-Home and cable households. The ASTRA satellite fleet currently comprises 13 satellites, transmitting in excess of 1100 analogue and digital television and radio channels as well as multimedia and Internet services. ASTRA's two prime orbital positions for DTH (Direct-To-Home) services are 19.2° East and 28.2° East. Professional services are offered from the orbital positions of 23.5°/24.2° East and 5.2° East. SES ASTRA is an SES GLOBAL company, whose securities are listed on the Stock Exchanges in Luxembourg and Frankfurt (SESG). SES GLOBAL wholly owns two market leading satellite operators, SES ASTRA in Europe, and SES AMERICOM in the US. The Company also holds strategic participations in first-class regional satellite service providers, the SES GLOBAL partner companies, including AsiaSat and AMERICOM ASIA-PACIFIC in Asia, Star One and Nahuelsat in Latin America, and NSAB in Europe. Through these, SES GLOBAL can provide outstanding satellite communications solutions via a fleet of 41 satellites across the globe. Approximately 95 percent of the world's population live within the footprints of the SES GLOBAL satellite network. In addition, SES GLOBAL is a shareholder in satellite technology companies Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd., ND Satcom and SATLYNX. Additional info at: www.ses-global.com

About NEWS Equipe

http://www.news-equipe.com

NEWS Equipe is a German-Dutch company with offices in Cologne, Berlin and Arnhem (The Netherlands).NEWS Equipe has built-up a reputation with news registration, but also offers facilities for sports and business events. With eight SNG-trucks NEWS Equipe offers a wide variety of services to customers such as ZDF, ARD and the Holland Media Group (RTL4, RTL5, Yorin). The state-of-the-art SNG-trucks are equipped with camera's and editing facilities. Three of the trucks have 12 meter long telescoping camera cranes which enable the cameras to be operated remotely. For further information about NEWS Equipe, please call the German office at (+49) 2203 10 40 30 or the Benelux office at (+31) 36 549 9536.