SES has announced today that, together with its long-term partner Telekom Serbia, it will carry six TV channels and one radio station for Serbian public broadcaster RTS across Europe.

The six RTS channels, RTS Satelit, RTS Život, RTS Drama, RTS Kolo, RTS Trezor, RTS Muzika and one radio station, Radio Beograd, will be transmitted to cable network headends in Europe and will be available to several million Serbian expats across the region via a dedicated smart card which can be integrated into the viewers’ set-top box.

Telekom Serbia, a Serbian telecommunications company headquartered in Belgrade, will provide all ground services including satellite uplink, encoding and scrambling, and will rely on SES’s capacity on one of its ASTRA satellite positioned at 5 degrees East.

We have been working together with our partner Telekom Serbia for many years on various projects and this new agreement strengthens not only our presence in the market but also our long-standing cooperation,” said Martin Ornass-Kubacki, Vice President, Chief Regional Officer Central Eastern Europe, SES Video, SES’s newly-created business unit. “We are also very pleased that RTS has chosen our ASTRA satellite for the distribution of its channels to the Serbian audience across Europe.”

It is our pleasure to have RTS on board. SES quality and professionalism, as well as our long-lasting partnership, were essential for closing such a deal and we look forward to serving RTS needs, together with SES, in the best possible way,” said Milutin Nikolic, Wholesale Director, Telekom Serbia.