iWorld
WORK Microwave inks multimillion-dollar deal with Eutelsat
Mumbai: Germany-based WORK Microwave, a manufacturer of advanced satellite communications equipment, announced that it has signed a new multimillion-dollar agreement with Eutelsat, a satellite operator.
Eutelsat is using WORK Microwave’s Ka- and Q-/V-band converters on its ground segment equipment during the next phase of its connectivity strategy, offering ultra-high data throughput via its KONNECT VHTS satellite, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
With 230 spot beams and an overall capacity of about 500 Gbps, KONNECT VHTS will provide two-way broadband connectivity across Europe and beyond. KONNECT VHTS will enable Eutelsat to provide fiber-like connectivity to end-users at fiber-like pricing, it added.
“Data consumption is skyrocketing around the world, and the goal of our KONNECT VHTS satellite is to enable easy, affordable, and fast internet delivery,” said Eutelsat’s broadband system and connectivity manager Guillaume Benoît. “Following the selection of WORK Microwave’s solution on Eutelsat KONNECT infrastructure for our broadband services in Europe and in Africa, we are pleased to confirm its use for our KONNECT VHTS ground infrastructure. With WORK Microwave’s well-engineered converter solutions, we can improve the reliability and performance of our ground infrastructure.”
“We’re thrilled to be awarded this new contract with Eutelsat, one of our longtime customers and an operator that is well-known for driving technology innovation,” said WORK Microwave CEO Dr Thomas Fröhlich. “Our converters offer a multichannel architecture that allows wider coverage of each frequency band for broadband applications, which is a real technological breakthrough for Eutelsat. Overall, this deployment reinforces our strong partnership with Eutelsat and validates their trust in WORK Microwave’s technology and the unmatched quality we provide for the Q- and V-band. This contract confirms the globally recognized leadership of WORK Microwave for state-of-the-art frequency converters in Q- and V-Band.”
Gaming
India’s broadcasters say no to Fifa World Cup 2026
Fifa has slashed its asking price by 65 per cent but India’s broadcasters are still not buying
MUMBAI: The world’s biggest sporting event cannot find a single taker in the world’s most sports-mad nation. Fifa’s television rights for the 2026 World Cup remain unsold in India, and the clock is ticking loudly.
To shift the property, world football’s governing body has already swallowed hard and cut its asking price from $100m to $35m, bundling in the 2030 edition as a sweetener. It has not worked. Indian broadcasters have looked at the offer, done the sums and quietly walked away.
The reasons are brutally simple. The 2026 tournament, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, kicks off in a time zone that turns India’s primetime into a graveyard shift. Most matches will air between midnight and 7am IST, a scheduling catastrophe for advertisers chasing mass reach. The 2022 Qatar edition was a gift by comparison, with matches dropping neatly into Indian evenings. North America offers no such luxury.
The market itself has also changed beyond recognition. The merger of Star India and Viacom18 into JioStar has gutted the competitive tension that once sent sports rights prices soaring. Where rival bidders once slugged it out, there is now a single dominant buyer, and it is in no hurry. JioStar has valued the rights at roughly $25m, a full $10m below Fifa’s already-discounted floor price. That gap has so far proved unbridgeable.
Broadcasters are also nursing a ferocious cricket hangover. Between 2022 and 2023, Indian media houses committed well over $10bn to cricket rights alone, covering IPL, ICC events and BCCI domestic fixtures combined. After a binge of that scale, appetite for a football package that delivers a fraction of the ratings, in the dead of night, is close to zero.
The economics of football broadcasting make the maths even harder. Cricket, with its natural breaks every few overs, is an advertiser’s paradise. Football offers a 15-minute halftime and precious little else. Recovering a nine-figure rights fee from a single half-hour ad window is a stretch at the best of times. These are not the best of times: the Indian government’s tightening grip on real-money gaming and gambling advertising has vaporised a category that once underwrote the economics of big sporting events.
Nor is the World Cup an anomaly. Indian Super League valuations have cratered. English Premier League rights have softened across successive cycles. The cooling of football as a broadcast commodity in India is structural, not cyclical.
With the tournament opening on 11th June, Fifa is running out of road. It may yet blink and meet JioStar at $25m. Or it may go direct, streaming the entire tournament on its own platform, Fifa+, or cutting a digital deal with YouTube, and hoping that a generation of Indian football fans finds its way there without a broadcaster to guide them.
Either way, the beautiful game’s Indian chapter is looking decidedly ugly.
