Media tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul made good on last year's r pledge to build an information superhighway in the sky’ by announcing during late March the proposed launch of two communications satellites, L-Star 1 and L-Star 2.

The satellites will have the capacity to provide 500 pay TV channels and will be able to deliver digitized broadcast direct-to-home across 15 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

L-Star 1 is scheduled to be launched in December 1997, and will be fully operational in early 1998. The second satellite, L-Star 2, will be launched before the end of 1998.

"This will bring an unprecedented capacity for direct-to-home broadcasting for Asia television," says an industry analyst.

Sondhi is launching the satellites through his company Asia Broadcasting & Communications Network (ABCN), a subsidiary of the M Group of Thailand. On March 26, ABCN announced that it had signed contracts worth US $480 million for subcontracted services to be supplied by Space System/Loral, which will build the satellites; Ariannespace, which will launch them; Telesat (Canada), which will provide ground control equipment; and other aspects by other companies.

ABCN is ‘being/courted’ by a number of Asian programmers, says Sondhi. Agreements will likely be announced within the next three months.

Moving on from satellites to telephones and telephone directories. With just 18,000 telephone lines, the publishing of the first bilingual Lao phone directory is a fait accompli.

Produced jointly by Australian telecom giant Telstra and Laos state owned Enterprise des Telecomunications (ETL), the 588 page directory contains 8,000 residential and 2,900 business, listings under 263 classifications, plus display ads in its Gold Pages.

The hardest sell was ‘proof of concept’ because only one out of 240 people has a telephone, says manager of International Systems National Directory Services with Telstra, Paul Donlan.

He based classifications on Telstra’s Australian Directory, but modified them to suit the local marker. For instance, there is a category for wats (temples) and Tuk-tuks (three-wheeler taxis).

Telstra printed 25,000 copies of the directory. These were distributed free to Laos’ telephone subscribers and sold in bookstores and hotels.

The directory cost about US $500,000 to produce and is not expected to break even for three years, says Donlan.