The growth in interest in satellite traffic from and to China, and within the giant country, extends well beyond the Olympic Games.
The past few weeks has seen a slew of unfortunate stories concerning Eutelsat and one of its (past) clients, the controversial NTDTV. The channel has had to find another nearby home since Eutelsat suffered a technical glitch on one of its satellites. But setting this one minor story aside, a study from Northern Sky Research on China’s satellite market forecasts a 5.3% rate of growth despite local regulatory and business challenges.

The report looks at Ku and C-Band demand, and outlines the many regulatory and market hurdles facing the mainland China market and provides a segmentation of capacity demand between that provisioned by China's domestic satellite operator and foreign satellite operators serving the country.

“Further, the inclusion of the Hong Kong and Macau satellite capacity market is a critical facet to the understanding of the overall mainland China assessment because these markets cannot be treated in exclusion of one another,” says the report.

"The quantification of overspill of television broadcasting signals nominally meant for the Hong Kong, Macau or greater Asian market is critical to piecing together the mainland China market," noted Patrick French, Senior Analyst for NSR and author of the report. "Just one of the critical drivers for the market is television broadcasters intentionally targeting the enormous illegal satellite TV market in China."

Other key developments in China have been the consolidation of its domestic satellites under one operator, China DBSAT, and the soon-to-be-launched national DTH service for China. "China is on the verge of finally initiating a brand new industry, legal DTH satellite TV services, in the coming months," said French. "As long awaited as this has been, there still remain a number of key hurdles to get the ball rolling, not the least of which being the still pending modification of Decree No. 129 to allow Chinese nationals the right to purchase, install and receive television services on a satellite dish."

NSR projects that the development of the Chinese DTH market will follow its own unique path, different than has been seen to date in Western countries or parallel markets like India, and should conservatively number nearly 3 million subscribers as of 2013.

"There is no doubt that with its enormous population and ethnic diversity, skyrocketing cell phone and pay-television subscribership, and proactive government efforts to bridge the digital divide in the country, China could offer the most potential for new satellite transponder demand in all of Asia," stated French. "Yet, NSR's assessment is that the challenges of turning this potential into a reality that shows up on the bottom lines of the region’s satellite operators are very substantial, and the actual rate of growth projected for the Chinese market, while respectable, certainly falls short of what it could be."

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