Echostar withdraws from 17Ghz Satellite Market

[nelson61]

Echstar had abandoned their plans for five (5) 17Ghz satellites with a launched value in the range of 1.5 billion dollars.

They state that 4 of the 5 slots lack sufficient international priority to avoid interference with other nations proposed 17 Ghz satellites. The 5th slot has fewer interference problems but would require a special redesigned outdoor unit (dish/lnb assembly) to be compatable with the existing fleet.

17 Ghz Surrender Filing

 

[mike123abc]

I wonder if this points to the end of expanding capacity for satellite TV as far as Dish is concerned. If Dish thinks the country will move to IPTV, a bunch more capacity may not be needed.

 

[pabeader]

get what they need when they buy the other guys

 

[HDRoberts]

With MPEG-4 and eliminating duplicate SD-HD feeds, they should not need the extra bandwidth. (At least not at that price)

 

[Voyager6]

I wonder if this is a partial response to having to deal with the Spectrum Five nonsense the last few years.

 

[nelson61]

Probably see it is a commodity business in which they can lease capacity (ciel 2, quetzsat 1 examples) if they need it.

The FCC has them under sanction for not completing launches and this should clear the deck for their request to move E8 to 86.5W.

 

[rocatman]

This is quite surprising considering they had recently submitted modifications to the FCC for at least two of these satellites. It probably is a result of some of Dish's other recent acquisitions and their long term plans with putting these pieces together.

 

[Tampa8]

I agree with HDRobert's post. Do away with SD duplicates of HD as soon as possible, go to all MPEG 4 as soon as possible, and you have quite alot of sat space. Merge with or aquire Direct TV and you have more than enough.

 

[DishSubLA]

I think they see delivery of a lot of content via broadband internet and are cobbling a hybrid service to make what bandwidth they have now most efficient.

 

[JosephB]

This is what I see happening (if they don't merge with DirecTV or a phone company..or even if they do merge with a phone company): Move to an all HD & MPEG-4 service as soon as is practicable (how many set top boxes can you buy for $1.5 billion?) and on top of that, reduce or greatly reduce the amount of linear PPV. If they start sticking 1TB drives in boxes, with MPEG 4 they could pre-download new hit releases for immediate VOD. For longer term items, a great number of customers are moving to broadband, and I see them using the Blockbuster online service as their primary PPV vehicle, freeing up space on the satellites for items that should truly be broadcast and not narrowcast.