Africa’s biggest pay TV service MultiChoice has signed a 15-year service agreement with Intelsat for an additional satellite.

Satellite ‘Intelsat 36’ is planned to launch in late 2016.

It will be co-located with Intelsat 20 which forms part of the satellite company’s “direct-to-home (DTH) neighbourhood in Africa”. In a statement, Intelsat says Multichoice has been an anchor customers of Intelsat 20 since 1995.

“Intelsat’s continued support will enable us to grow our business, providing viewers with high quality programming and compelling entertainment services,” said Tim Jacobs, group chief financial officer for MultiChoice in a press statement.

The statement goes on to detail how the Intelsat 36 design will feature Ku- and C-band services.

“The MultiChoice DTH services will utilise the Ku-band payload. The C-band payload will provide services to other customers using the premier Intelsat 68.5˚E video neighborhood, which also distributes content to South Asian cable communities,” says Intelsat.

MultiChoice sells its pay-TV services, DStv, in 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the adjacent Indian Ocean islands.