The French international news channel France 24 has secured a place on Eur Radio, a new, free, pan-European digital satellite radio demonstration platform which will serve the European Union region, launched by Solaris Mobile.
Eur Radio will be used initially for marketing and demonstration purposes but could become the catalyst for a commercial service, providing listeners across the EU with a bouquet of radio channels, both public and private, covering the majority of European languages. The bouquet will encompass genres such as popular general entertainment, news and music along with rich media and interactive entertainment capabilities, which should prove attractive to a wide variety of listeners. The demonstration platform also has the capacity to provide enriched infotainment with new in-car data services and will run as a complementary service to traditional national FM, DAB or S-Band services+.
The first phase will include the following European radio stations; Hi Radio FFH (Hessen/Germany) and planet radio (Hessen/Germany). The platform will also include the TV channel, France 24 (France).
Steve Maine, CEO, Solaris Mobile, commented, “We are delighted to be launching Eur Radio, Solaris Mobile’s pan-European digital satellite radio demonstration platform which will broadcast over the European Union by utilising the S-Band capacity on our W2A satellite and complement our national services. This is a very exciting step for us, and we hope that it will serve as a stepping stone to achieve the full potential of a pan-European digital radio service.”
Solaris Mobile will make its S-Band capacity on the W2A satellite available to facilitate EUR Radio, which will go live this year. Solaris Mobile, a joint venture between Eutelsat and SES-Astra was set up in 2008 to develop next generation mobile communication services. The company intends to deploy a hybrid satellite and terrestrial network enabling the provision of mobile television, radio and data channels as well as broadband and voice communication services to be delivered to mobile phones, portable terminals and in-vehicle devices.