Nova Telecommunications S.M.S.A. is a

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...

company in

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...

which provides

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

and

fixed telephony A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

. It also offers satellite services in

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ...

. It is traded on the

Athens Exchange The Athens Stock Exchange (ASE or ATHEX; el, Χρηματιστήριο Αθηνών (Χ.Α.), ''Chrimatistírio Athinón'') is the stock exchange of Greece, based in the capital city of Athens. It was founded in 1876. There are currently five ...

until its delisting in 2021. In June 2016 the services for clients and

SMEs Superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) systems store energy in the magnetic field created by the flow of direct current in a superconducting coil which has been cryogenically cooled to a temperature below its superconducting critical ...

were rebranded under the Nova brand. The company gave up Forthnet brand completely in June 2020. On 29 May 2020

BC Partners BC Partners is a British international investment firm with over $40 billion of assets under management across private equity, credit and real estate in Europe and North America. Its global headquarters are in London. The firm invests across all ...

United Group United Group is an alternative telecom provider in Southeast Europe that operates both telecommunications platforms and mass media outlets. History United Group was formed in 2007, as a Luxembourg-registered multinational entity, in a merger ...

agreed to purchase a majority stake in Nova from a consortium of 4 Greek banks. As of 29 April 2021 is the sole shareholder. On October 15, 2021, Nova announced that they would be shutting down some of their older services (like Dialup, Call-by-Call and old technology ADSL) on December 15 of the same year. On January 11 2023, the company Wind Hellas will be merged with Nova, thus it will also serve mobile telecommunication services

History

Forthnet was established in October 1995 by Minoan Lines SA and the

Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas The Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas (FORTH) ( el, Ίδρυμα Τεχνολογίας και Έρευνας - ΙΤΕ) is a research center in Greece, supervised by the Ministry for Education through itGeneral Secretariat for Resea ...

. Nova brand was launched in Greece in December 1999 for the

satellite television Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna com ...

platform by

Naspers Naspers Limited is a South African multinational internet, technology and multimedia holding company headquartered in Cape Town, with interests in online retail, publishing and venture capital investment. Naspers' principal shareholder is its ...

, a

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

n company, who also operated

MultiChoice MultiChoice is a South African company that operates DStv, a major satellite television service in Sub-Saharan Africa and GOtv, a minor service operating in over 9 countries of this area and Showmax service. MultiChoice was formed out of the s ...

. In 2002 Nova absorbed the

Alpha Digital Alpha Digital is a Greek former digital satellite pay TV platform owned by Alpha Digital Synthesis SA. Commissioned by Alpha TV and executive director Stathis Tsotsoros, the platform was launched on October 29, 2001 and shut down around a year la ...

satellite television platform. On April 14, 2008, Forthnet reached an agreement with

to purchase Netmed, the parent company of Nova satellite television platform in Greece and Cyprus for €430 million. In 2010, Nova Greece had 363,679 subscribers. HD service counted 52,968 subscribers in 2011. In the end June 2015 the platform had 509,088 subscribers, while one year later, June 2016 it had a decrease to 460,252. In July 2017 it was referred that Nova had 430,000 subscribers. In 2020 Nova had 551,000 broadband internet subscribers and 457,000 pay television subscribers. In March 2021 it was announced that Nova had 456,500 pay television subscribers making it the second largest TV provider.

Satellite Technical information

Nova broadcasts in standard definition using the

DVB-S Digital Video Broadcasting – Satellite (DVB-S) is the original DVB standard for Satellite Television and dates from 1995, in its first release, while development lasted from 1993 to 1997. The first commercial applications was by Star TV in Asia ...

MPEG-2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, ...

format and (since September 2010) in high definition using the DVB-S

MPEG-4 MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related t ...

format through

Hot Bird Hot Bird (also styled HOTBIRD) is a group of satellites operated by Eutelsat, located at 13 °E over the equator ( orbital position) and with a transmitting footprint over Asia, Europe, North Africa, Americas and the Middle East. Only Digital d ...

8 satellite at 13°E. The service is encrypted with Irdeto

conditional access Conditional access (CA) is a term commonly used in relation to software and to digital television systems. Conditional access is that ‘just-in-time’ evaluation to ensure the person who is seeking access to content is authorized to access the c ...

system. Until recently the subscribers had the option of buying a specific set-top box, or using any DVB-S Irdeto enabled set-top box, but since September 2009 new subscribers are only allowed to use the company's own set-top box. This change of policy has raised some significant controversy. Nova has also introduced a

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data Digital data, in information theory and information systems, is information represented as a string of discrete symbols eac ...

service, accessible only through a (different) specific set-top box. This service requires an extra subscription fee but also provides the subscriber with the option to watch two different channels on two different TV sets in the same household.

Digital satellite receivers

Nova Satellite Package includes digital satellite receivers manufactured by

Pace Pace or paces may refer to: Business *Pace (transit), a bus operator in the suburbs of Chicago, US *Pace Airlines, an American charter airline * Pace Foods, a maker of a popular brand of salsa sold in North America, owned by Campbell Soup Compan ...

. The current models are NovaBox HD 831 and NovaBox HD PVR 865. Older models were Panasat 1110, Panasat 910, as well as the older Panasat 720i, Panasat 700 and Panasat 642, manufactured by Panasat.

Nova channels

Nova operates 4 Nova Cinema and 14

Novasports Nova Sports is a Greece, Greek sports pay television network owned by Nova (Greece), Nova, a subsidiary of Greek telecommunications company of the same name. It was launched in 1994 as ''SuperSport'' and at the time was the first premium sports s ...

pay television Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...

channels and an entertainment channel

Nova Life Nova Life is a Greek satellite television channel owned by Nova, who own and operate a DTH satellite service with the same name. It was launched on May 13, 2013, and it features series, movies, talk shows, shows with showbiz news, making of ...

. Since 2012 all Nova channels are available through CytaVision in Cyprus.

Nova Cyprus

Nova has been providing satellite television and internet services in Cyprus since 2004. Most television channels are available, except generalist television channels from Greece which do not have a broadcasting license for Cyprus.

Logos

References

{{Reflist

External links

Nova official websiteNova Cyprus official website
Telecommunications companies established in 1995 Companies based in Attica Internet service providers of Greece Direct broadcast satellite services Television networks in Greece Greek brands Companies listed on the Athens Exchange Greek companies established in 1995