The deviant behavior of Telesat Canada’s Anik E-2, costing millions in lost revenue and disrupting tv signals, has also intensified interest in the timetable for the rollout of digital video compression via satellite.

Problems with Anik E-2, which began Jan. 20, have cost it up to $30 million in lost business – 15% of its $200 million annual revenue – and forced a switch in a whole host of E-2 signals to Telesat’s E-1 satellite and u.s. birds, as well as the deletion of at least two signals which could not be accommodated on other satellites.

Beyond the business and public relations headaches the space-age dilemma has created for Telesat, E-2’s mechanical malfunctions have forced one customer, Cancom, to rethink its service strategy. According to one Cancom vice-president, Susan Cornell, as Telesat shuffled E-2 signals onto E-1 and u.s. backups, it discovered it didn’t have enough room for all the signals which had been on E-2. Telesat then asked Cancom if it would consider relinquishing one of the eight transponders it held for its customers’ signals so that other businesses, whose livelihood depends on access to just one channel, would not be jeopardized. Cancom agreed to have the signal from cftm-tv (Tele-Metropole out of Montreal) removed, thus ending its distribution to direct-to-home, mainly francophone, dishes outside Quebec.

While Cornell says francophones outside Quebec can still pick up TV5 via satellite, and Cancom is pleased with Telesat’s ability to provide backup for most E-2 signals within 18 hours of its failure, she adds that Cancom has to decide how to proceed.

‘We’re surveying cable customers and seeing what alternatives are best for them,’ she says, adding that the choice seems to be between awaiting the rollout of digital video compression – wherein as many as six signals can be squeezed onto a satellite transponder which currently only accommodates one signal – or trying to find satellite backups for the displaced or deleted signals.

Meantime, at cbc, which had one ‘feeder’ signal (used to gather bits and pieces of video information to a central location) deleted in the E-2 troubles, the corporation is ‘doubling up’ on its other satellite channels.

Anik’s difficulties started when it began turning at a rate of one-half revolution per minute so that, in the words of Barry Turner, Telesat vice-president of sales and marketing, it’s ‘not pointing at the earth anymore.’

The bird is not supposed to revolve at all. Turner says the effect on a tv signal is like the comparison between a flashlight beam and a lighthouse searchlight: one casts a constant path of light, the other sweeps in a circular motion.

All of these events form a backdrop for the impending crtc hearings for specialty television applicants scheduled to get underway Feb. 14 in Hull, Que. Most estimates suggest about six new services will be licensed and, for satellite-to-cable delivery, require new satellite capacity.

Turner says the new specialties are not likely to pose a problem unless those licensed plan to go on-air before the last quarter of this year. He says Telesat is currently examining a short list of would-be suppliers of digital video compression equipment and expects the first compressed signals will be beamed during the last three months of 1994. Compression would allow carriage of new services and, presumably, the deleted services would then also fit on Anik E-1. Of course, delivery of specialty services will also depend on available capacity on cable systems.

The current troubles are not the first to plague Anik E-2. When the $300 million satellite was launched in April 1991, its C-band antenna would not deploy. Turner says it became operational July 3 of that year.