(30 June 2007 9:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Satellite service provider Intelsat and Live Earth have announced a relationship that will enable Intelsat to join Live Earth as the official satellite capacity sponsor.

The music event takes place on 7 July 2007, Live Earth will use Intelsat to beam global entertainment headliners such as Madonna, Akon, Missy Higgins, Kumi Koda, UB40, The Police, Shakira, Joss Stone and Snoop Dogg to an estimated two billion viewers worldwide in an effort to raise awareness about the climate crisis.

As the official satellite capacity sponsor, Intelsat will use its industry-leading network of satellite and terrestrial facilities for the collection and distribution of the Live Earth concerts in standard and high definition video formats. The worldwide series of concerts will boast 24 hours of music across seven continents from eight cities, and will feature performances by more than 150 of the world's top musical artists.

Live Earth founder and producer Kevin Wall says, “Live Earth has the potential to be the world's largest high definition event, so our production standard requirements are obviously going to be complex and widespread. Intelsat's turnkey transmission services provide us the capacity we need to successfully broadcast this event around the world. The high definition experience that will be delivered during the event will ultimately engage a global audience and hopefully create a movement of change.”

Intelsat CEO David McGlade says, "Intelsat's mission is to connect the planet Earth, and we believe our involvement with the Live Earth concert is consistent with that mission. Our role also showcases the high definition experience and the power of our global fleet.

“With globalisation of content and high definition being among the top trends in our industry, customers choose Intelsat for worldwide transmissions of programs and special events.”

During the 24-hour event, Intelsat will deliver the standard and high definition programme feeds from the eight international venues (New York, London, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney and Hamburg) to the Live Earth production center in London, England.

The content contribution process will utilise satellites, fiber and teleport facilities throughout Intelsat's global network. From London, the post-production world feed for the Live Earth concert will be transmitted across Intelsat's GlobalConnex network to three of Intelsat's teleports. Intelsat's teleports then will distribute the Live Earth global feed to the world's leading video neighborhoods which reside on Intelsat's satellite fleet and to points-of-presence for Internet distribution.

As a result, worldwide music fans and technology aficionados will be witness to one of the largest entertainment events in history. Furthermore, viewers in Europe and North America will enjoy 24 hours of live high definition programming of unprecedented scope and scale.

Intelsat's portfolio of GlobalConnex services provides customers with a single-sourced global distribution network optimized for seamless delivery of such large-scale events. Intelsat is the only global satellite operator to provide coverage of the Olympic Games since 1968. From the World Cup soccer championships to the NBA Finals, Intelsat supports broadcasters of major events by providing the most powerful ground and space infrastructure, specifically optimised to meet their needs.