148W Update

[nelson61]

Dish has been dancing around trying to not lose the 148W license following the Echostar 5 debacle several years ago.

Their latest response to the FCC hints at their plans but shows them holding their cards close to the chest.


Dish FCC 148W Update

Echostar 16 launch date is planned for August 2012

[ckhalil18]

Forgive me if this is a dumb question to ask, but does 148 (or has 148) been used to cover the whole country or has it only been used for some local channels? 148 is pretty far from the U.S (especially the east coast) I'm also a little surprised they never mentioned Echo 7 in their FCC response. It's in a lot better shape than Echo 8 and it's just sitting there at 119. Probably the best satellite they could use right now since it's already the closest to 148 so it won't use a lot of its resources to move to another orbit.

[nelson61]

They would want to keep E7 where it is since it backs up spot beam capacity

148w can reach about mid continent but could do great things in hawaii, pacific alaska and west coast, maybe parts of mexico also. Could also back up some spots for 129w similar to what they do with 77w.

[Iceberg]

back in the day 148 had the PI channels and some local markets on SD (this is when HD locals were in infancy). This is when there was 61.5, 110 119, 129 and 148. (105 & 121 had been shut off for locals)

Thats also where they tested stuff. FTA'ers got to see exactly how MPEG4 SD worked before EA was conceived. At the time it wasnt pretty....

[GaryPen]

148 used to have International channels, almost a mirror of 61.5

[DishSubLA]

I think they will want to use 148 as primarily for Alaska and Hawaii. Could this free up bandwidth for 24/7 RSN's for the WA? I believe the current Alaska/Hawaii offerings are on spot beams, but could not the current config be reconfigured (fewer spots and more ConUS to accommodate 24/7 RSN's? That seems the only real plan to "crystallize" where Dish currently has a clear disadvantage that they would seem to want to fix.

[Iceberg]

148 used to have International channels, almost a mirror of 61.5

correct. It was a mirror of 61.5 for those channels

[rocatman]

It will be interesting if the FCC deals with the 148 W slot like they did with the 86.5 W slot i.e., requiring a new satellite there. If that is the case then of the current on-orbit options, E-15 might be the only one acceptable to the FCC. I believe Dish will still need more spotbeam capabilities even after E-16 is deployed so a new spotbeam satellite at 148 W that provides service to Alaska and Hawaii would be ideal.

[nelson61]

Whatever it would be used for would not "fit" their single dish standard for the existing Dish network.

[rocatman]

Whatever it would be used for would not "fit" their single dish standard for the existing Dish network.

Actually Dish could set up an new "arc" that would utilize just 129 W and 148 W. That's only a 19 degree separation, no different from receiving 110 W and 129 W on a single dish. If Dish were to build a new satellite with about 10 TPs dedicated to spotbeams and the other 22 for CONUS, that would provide enough space (38 TPs) for national programming on 129 W and 148 W if MPEG-4 is exclusively used.