The Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU) has selected Belgium-based Newtec to upgrade its infrastructure to bring the first high definition Olympic Games to the Middle East and North Africa. The infrastructure upgrades will allow the ASBU members to receive the live Olympic multilateral feeds and news channels in HD, and will also turn the HD signals to provide simultaneous SD broadcasting. The content will be injected into the central archive of the ASBU Multimedia Exchange Network over Satellite, allowing members to access the content at a later time. 

According to an industry executive, the regional television industry faces a shortage of satellite capacity because of the number of channels converting to high definition. Many local stations are converting to high definition broadcasts, and the existing satellite capacity could be exhausted by 2017. "We won't have enough capacity - between all the satellite operators - to keep up with the demand of all broadcasters converting to HD," said Mohamed Youssif, the chief executive of the satellite broadcaster YahLive in Abu Dhabi.

The Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC)  is set to launch its high definition service. The Dubai based broadcaster will lease an entire transponder on Eutelsat's new Atlantic Bird 7 satellite in order to facilitate HD broadcasting. MBC announced a multi- year contract with the European satellite operator at Informa's Digital TV Middle East conference in Dubai.