Leading lights from the music industry will come together for a star-studded concert in South Africa this weekend, just days before World AIDS Day, to raise money for former-President Mandela`s campaign for action on the epidemic.
Nelson Mandela has dedicated the number he wore during his imprisonment on Robben Island - 46664 - to the campaign, and the lyrics for a song have been written around the number. With a quarter of South Africa`s population infected by the HIV/AIDS virus, the 46664 concert will benefit the Nelson Mandela Foundation`s efforts in the country, and raise awareness of the work of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria throughout the world. (For more information see www.46664.com).
The three-hour concert will be held at Green Point Stadium, Cape Town, on Saturday, 29 November. 40,000 people are expected to be at the stadium, and the event will also be broadcast free to a potential audience of two billion people around the planet, using television, radio, and the Internet.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation will be using Europe*Star 1 for local distribution of the concert around the region. A second feed on Europe*Star 1 will simultaneously be sent to Europe, and made available on a rights-free basis for redistribution through affiliates of the European Broadcasting Union and Asian Broadcasting Union, with combined membership of over 100 broadcasters. The BBC World Service will also broadcast the concert on radio. Europe*Star is providing capacity for the duration of the concert, and for the later transmission of a three-hour edited video.
Roy Ingle, Europe*Star`s Regional Director for Africa, said "When this concert was originally planned for last year, Europe*Star approached GlobeCast, which is organising the video distribution from Cape Town, with the offer of satellite capacity. When the concert plans were reinstated this year, we were delighted to be chosen on merit to carry the broadcast. Europe*Star feels honoured to be chosen to carry this concert, and also delighted to join the organisations contributing to such a worthwhile cause".
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Europe*Star is a satellite owner-operator, offering capacity on its geostationary communications satellites. The company leases whole and fractional transponders on a full-time and occasional use basis, for use with a broad range of satellite communications services including television, Internet, telephony and corporate networking. Brought into service at the start of 2001, the innovative Europe*Star 1 satellite has five highperformance beams covering Europe, Southern Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia. Its Europe*Star B satellite provides additional capacity for markets in Central and Eastern Europe.
An Alcatel company, Europe*Star is headquartered in London, with regional marketing offices in Cape Town and New Delhi. Europe*Star also operates its own mission control centre in Toulouse, for tracking, telemetry & control of the satellites.
For more information visit http://www.europestar.com.
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