Are most local channels delivered to Dish's Uplink center (either Cheyenne WY or Gilbert AZ) by the local station's own satellite's, and if not, how else would they get there?
How is local programming delivered to Dish's uplink center?
- Thread starter sjvirchow
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They are sent via fiber from the stations themself or a local pop which captures the signals and sends them to the uplink centers via fiber.
Sounds like most are delivered by satellite then, as I doubt any local stations around here (Nebraska) can push their signal all the way to Wyoming by fiber optic cable or antenna.
Dish grabs the signal of the local station OTA or via a direct fiber connection to the station's studios and then sends the local station's signal over the Echostar fiber network to the uplink center where the signal is then uplinked to the satellite.
I'm having a hard time understanding how this would work. Wouldn't it be too expensive for a local station to run that much fiber just to get to either Wyoming or Arizona, and also too expensive to push the OTA signal that far? Yeah it sounds expensive to use a satellite to uplink it back to Dish, but it sounds a lot cheaper than using fiber, and more cost efficient.
They use Dish's fiber network. Dish has local Point's of presences in each area to pull the local station's signal and send it back to the uplink center via the Echostar fiber network, which is one if not the biggest fiber network in the US.
Wow, I'm impressed. I never knew Dish/Echostar would invest to run as much fiber as they do... is it underground fiber? I'm shocked.
I think it has to be underground since it spans the whole country. Not just 1 area like Verizon's FiOS service.
Here I am working as a networking engineer, playing with fiber all day long, and I had no idea that Echostar of all people are running the largest fiber network in the US. I guess it makes sense, you can run fiber as long as you want, and the quality of whatever's being sent down the line isn't affected much if at all, and there's no waiting for the content to be delivered since it's delivered, literally, at the speed of light.
It is very doubtful that many of the fiber runs are underground, since that costs Big Bucks compared to hanging it on unsightly telephone poles.
Our local public school system connects their schools together with fiber, and that's run on above ground poles, but you'd never know it, they very sneakily hide them. Some are run underground, for various reasons. It does cost much more to run fiber underground, than above ground, but if it's below ground you don't have to worry about outages near as much due to weather, downed poles, or things of that nature.
I imagine most of their network is run on the old fiber network the Williams Company here in Tulsa, laid nationwide in their old decommed gas pipelines decades ago. I believe most of that is now owned and operated by Level 3 Commmunications.
