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TS News - DirecTV May Link With Nethold

TELE-satellit News, 15 August 1996

DirecTV May Link With Nethold
  LONDON, England, 96/08/15 (TS) -- DirecTV, the multichannel digital TV
programming venture of General Motors Corp., is set to link with Nethold for
a new European TV partnership, according to press reports. Nethold is owned
jointly by Switzerland's Compagnie Financiere Richemont AG and South
Africa's Multichoice.

  The reports say the purchase is part of plans that General Motors has to
take DirecTV to other regions of the world. It already runs services in
north and south America and a Japanese service is under development. A link
with Nethold would give it a foot into the European and African marketplaces.

  Nethold has digital TV plans for services in the Benelux, the Nordic
countries, Africa and the Middle East and Central Europe. It has booked a
total of 24 transponders on the various Astra, Eutelsat and PamAmSat
satellites, and has placed firm orders with Philips, Pace and National
Panasonic for the provision of a total of 1.1 million digital IRDs
(integrated receiver-decoders), the largest order ever of such equipment.

  It's existing analog services have 2.5 million subscribers in 14 European
and 29 African countries with annual revenues of $700 million.

  In April this year the senior vice president of DirecTV International,
Celsos Azevedo, commented, "Europe is very important to us; we have been in
contact with some potential partners in several countries."


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