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COMPANY REPORT

Satellite Uplink Station, Netherlands

CASTOR:

More than an

Uplink Station

www.TELE-satellite.info/12/03/castor-satellite-uplink

Business Voucher
Direct Contact to Sales Manager

TELE-satellite Magazine

Internet and TV uplink for cruise ships Data services for specific user groups Uplink for many Dutch radio channels Downlink/encoding for IPTV providers Free capacity for additional uplink customers
www.TELE-satellite.com 02-03/2012 TELE-satellite International The Worlds Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine

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COMPANY REPORT

Satellite Uplink Station, Netherlands

TV, Radio and Internet Uplinks for Europe and Africa

Edwin Cras is Managing

Director of the satellite uplink station CASTOR. He is an enthusiastic satellite DXer that has been reading TELEsatellite for many years. My first satellite dish was a 1.5meter antenna that I installed in 1990. Today he uses a motorized 2.0-meter antenna at home. He absolutely enjoys being at CASTOR and working with all those large dishes every day; its something that a private satellite DXer can only dream of.

Burum

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If you ever find yourself traveling in northern Holland through the town of Burum, you wont be able to help but notice the giant satellite antenna farm. Large 32-meter antennas stand alongside 16.4-meter dishes as well as many nine-meter antennas. Theres also a large assortment of smaller dishes of all sizes. The groundstation used to belong to the Dutch telecommunications provider KPN but is now owned by Stratos, a leading provider for Inmarsat services. Ivo Veldkamp successfully negotiated a management buy-out in early 2005 and established CASTOR. As a result CASTOR has become an important provider at the Burum Teleport together with Stratos itself. Managing Director Edwin Cras told us more about those early days: We started with seven employees; they had control over a total of six antennas: a small 4.6-meter dish, two 6.0-meter antennas and three of the large 9.0-meter giants. The young company proved to be successful in the market and has been able to increase their sales from four million Euros back then towards almost 10 million Euros today. We grow between 10 and 20% every year. Who are the heavyweights for CASTOR at the Burum Teleport? An important part of our business is with Maritime Ser-

vice Providers, comments Edwin Cras, which includes for example the Miami based company MTN, one of the largest in this segment. MTN has been using CASTOR Teleport for many years to provide Internet service as well as their own onboard TV channels to cruise ships at this side of the globe. For these customers we put our largest system into service: the 16.4-meter dish that is fixed on NSS12 at 57 east. The 16.4-meter dish is not the only antenna that was added since the founding of the company; nine-meter dishes were also added. Three of our five 9.0-meter antennas are used for the Ku-band: one is pointed to AM1 at 40E, another to ASTRA 3B at 23.5E and the third is aligned with EUTELSAT W2A at 10E. We were surprised to learn what these satellites are used for; Edwin Cras explains: They are used to provide passenger planes with Internet access so that the passengers dont have to do without their laptops or Smartphones. For this service CASTOR handles both the uplink and downlink Internet traffic, The remaining two ninemeter dishes are used for the C-band. One of them is pointed to EXPRESS A4

at 14W while the other one is aligned with INTELSAT 906 at 64E. Both of these uplinks are used for maritime data transmissions. CASTOR has also been uplinking transponders for the Dutch DTH bouquet Canal Digitaal from Burum using a 9 meter antenna on Astra 3B. CASTOR has been offering occasional capacity (short SNG transmissions) since 2010. We have leased an entire transponder with 54 MHz bandwidth on AM44 at 11W and use it to offer SNG transmissions, Edwin Cras tells us, One hour of transmission time with a bandwidth of 36 MHz costs 600 Euros with us. The bandwidth is precisely set up for an HD channel. Customers can select the slots on their own through our online booking system, he adds. But CASTORs main source of earnings comes from closed user groups. Edwin Cras explains what that means: We have, for example, a European country

Administrative building in

Burum in northern Holland, where CASTOR rents offices from Stratos.

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as a customer that wants to provide their embassies in Africa with secure Internet service. For this customer CASTOR provides the uplink and downlink Internet connection not only for their internal operation but also for the public Internet. Other similar customers are mining companies or oil companies that want to link all of their branch offices together. This business segment makes up about 50% of CASTORs total sales. Edwin Cras is expecting that this will increase to 70% by 2013. CASTOR has an ideal location in the flatlands of northern Holland: We can see all the satellites from 70.5E to 55W. Their Burum location is just one part of CASTOR. We also operate another uplink station in Hilversum south of Amster1. Edwin Cras in the engineering area 2. The 16.4-meter antenna is controlled from here. The satellite beacon signal receiver is at the top. In the middle is the control system for the antenna with a display of the actual value of the antenna (at the top of the display) and the desired value (at the bottom of the display) of the antenna for, in this case, the NSS-12 satellite. The LNB controller is at the bottom. If an LNB should fail, this system automatically switches over to the spare LNB. 3. The labeling gives it away: the TV channels received by CASTOR from the Congo for an IPTV provider are processed here.

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CASTOR uses this dish

to receive the TV channels from the Congo off of the RASCOM satellite at 2E.

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dam. This location is very active with the uplink of radio stations. He lists them: We have been uplinking for Radio 538, Sky Radio, Veronica, Slam FM, 100%NL as well as Arrow Rock and Arrow Jazz since the early 90s. But thats still not enough. CASTOR is developing another business sector: We receive the satellite channels for IPTV providers who then offer them to customers via the Internet. One of them is the IPTV provider Bouquet Uhuru with TV channels from the Congo that CASTOR receives in the C-band from the RASCOM satellite at 2E. Another is the provider Premier Satellite with some English language TV channels from ASTRA at 28.2E. From the original seven employees it has become 14 and CASTOR is involved in many activities in many different areas that should allow them to tackle any future opportunities. Since we have so many antennas of different sizes available to us, we can react very quickly to any requests, comments Edwin Cras and then continues, And because of our inexpensive rates we are very attractive to new customers.
1. One of CASTORs prominent customers is the American firm MTN. They provide cruise ships with TV and Internet services. Here we see the four-way C-band amplifiers with redundany for CASTORs satellite uplink with three-way redundancy. 2. VSAT platform (iDirect) for one of the closed user group customers.

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