Per the New and Updates from the web page
"January 20th, 2010: Contacted by Brian Gohl - President Glorystar Christian Satellite Service"
so it's not hard to specuate that a combination of "free services" is under consideration. The obvious motivation would be economics.
The more exisiting FTA content providers that see an advantage of a "buy in bulk and save" co-op approach to purchasing bandwith, the more this venture may attract.
It is possible in their current arrangement that some content providers could operate with less bandwidth, but must purchase a minimum. Inside the co-op'd bandwith, the requirements may be more flexible, or no minimum at all.
If it were possible, wouldnt be nice to see some of the Equity channels we lost resurected? Maybe Safe TV too, or any of the other "independents" that the new owners decided it wasnt neccessary or cost effective to stay on satellite? If the price is right and the customer base pans out they might be interested again.
Perhaps there is another station owner/mgr that had the same vision as Ted Turner. (W)TBS started out as The Superstation, channel 17 in Atlanta. A nobody, independent before going national via satellite feed.
Yes, TT has DEEP pockets, and they held exclusive rights to all the Braves and Falcons games (DUH), but he did have the vision to see the advanages to satellite broadcast. I wonder if you can still even get WTBS OTA in Atlanta.
ALTV might be another to approach for re-uplinking. Since the are essentially FTA too, they might consider it a good investment to open their customer base to DVB if the price is right.
Are all APTN channels supposed to be "closed"? If not they may be approachable as well for re-uplinking to increease potential customer base.
All in all the potential seems limitless, but to be a big enough thorn (churning) in the big boy's side and get the "name brand channels" signed on will be a challenge. We may have to settle for being in the "niche" we have become accustomed to.
Cable and TelCo IPTV content provider customers will be harder to sway since many bundle their MM services with IP services, BUT I see a potential here too.
As a splinter project for future consideration a Satellite ISP that goes heads up against Hughes and Wild Blue at half the cost would be awesome. Sign me up!
I have a newer HughesNet and an old DirectWay setup I'd love to re-purpose for such a (fairly priced) service but for many, a downlink side only would be sufficient. Data capable DVB cards are cheap, and it may even foster a "stand alone wireless" variant of the hardware, similar to NAS.
It would not even have to be non-profit AFAIC. I dont have a problem with them making a bussiness profit off of me, just not an obscene one.
And the saga continues........