China Central Television, the national broadcaster in China, has renewed a multi-year contract for the global distribution of its programming with Intelsat.

CCTV is also utilizing Intelsat for its international backhaul transmission of the Asian Games from Doha, Qatar, back to Beijing, which start today and run through December 15.

A long-standing customer since the launch of PAS-2 in 1994, CCTV became the world's first global Mandarin Chinese television service when it expanded its services internationally via the PAS-3 satellite in 1995.

Intelsat currently provides full-time program distribution services for CCTV via its PAS-1R Atlantic Ocean Region satellite, PAS-9 Atlantic Ocean Region satellite and PAS-10 Indian Ocean Region satellite. Intelsat also provides CCTV with capacity on its Galaxy 3C satellite for direct-to-home (DTH) services in the United States. This renewal contract also expands CCTV's C- and Ku-band capacity agreement.