DIRECTV Could Team With EchoStar On HDTV

[rad]

Although maybe not considered a merger, there would no longer be competition, and I would think that someone would have to have oversight to eliminate price fixing, as with the airlines.

Why do you say there wouldn't be competition if all they're doing is sharing satellite transponders? They could sell some assets to a new company that's owned 50/50 by D* and E* and they pay that company to provide the program distribution. D* and E* would then still be able to charge their customers whatever the market would bear. This could be good for compition since if the program material's PQ is the same on both services they'd have to do something to make themselves better then the other company, either better hardware, pricing or customer service.

 

[SmityWhity]

What's the latest FOX term "In active concern with".
Setting up a 3rd company that they owned 50/50 would be no different than merging, or partial merging.

Maybe NPS should sell DNS, Locals, and HD!

But than after awhile, what's left to justify Dish staying in business as a DBS provider? The more the company has to offer, the more revenue created to cover operating expenses.

Don't get me wrong, I think there would be a lot of benefit if they could combine some operations, such as up-linking/down-linking common services such as Locals. And even better would be if there was a common platform to receive signals on, i.e., equipment compatibility. I think equipment compatibility would increase one's chances of switching DBS service more quickly than now.

(A major benefit to the world would be more available bandwidth, and less space junk.)

Maybe it would not eliminate competition; but really, it would depend on how it was all done. But if they merged all/most operations, but just did not merge on paper as a single company, that would be like husband and wife rolling around on the sheets in a community property state. Do you think there is competition there?

would then still be able to charge their customers whatever the market would bear

You are right, they could charge their customers whatever the market would bear.... That is, whatever price they agree on between themselves.

So that leaves.

They would have to improve on something else, like customer service.

Ha ha, they both contract it out to the same overseas company.

I think we agree, it can be done in a way to work.:

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

As far as the Internet / Telephone goes, there is NO WAY for it to happen with the current setups, the dishes are receive only, a iinternet dish needs special equipment and exact setup for it to work properly.

But again I could see them sharing bandwidth and offering HD Channels to each other.

 

[scooby2]

VoIP will work over WildBlue. It is hit or miss right now and it is not pretty. People do talk over each other and the lag can be very bad as Wildblue is way oversold until their new sat gets into service. If D* dedicated a bunch of Ka spots just to VoIP, it should be possible to make an acceptable service.

Review of wildblue w/ vonage before wildblue was oversold
http://www.dslreports.com/comment/2554/51501


As for this sharing, I've been saying this for some time now. Without a merger or sharing E* is going to be in a tremendous hurt and D* would also be hurting without a triple or quadruple play offering. According to LongHorn it sounds like they might have this figured out.

Hopefully something good comes of this!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

BTW what I have heard about this in reguards to internet is not having them use Satellite based INternet, but instead WIFI type access from Earthlink.

They are currently actually testing this in California somewhere.

 

[ts7]

Easy to calculate- correct me if I'm wrong. The geo satellites are about 22,241 miles up. Actually, the distance would be even longer because you are aiming at the satellite at an angle, which increases the distance traveled. But let's go with the best case scenario. The speed of light is about 186,282 miles per second. You speak, the signal travels up to a satellite, down to the other party. That's over 44,000 miles. They hear you about .238 seconds after you speak. They respond- another 44,000 plus miles. You hear a reply no sooner than .477 seconds after you spoke. Small, but annoying and not conducive to a normal conversation.

Throw in any delays introduced in the switching and other land-line delays and you have a noticable delay. Case in point - watch ANY newscast where the anchor is interacting with a correspondent over a satellite (especially if the signal is bounced over more than one) - there is always a .5 - 2 second delay between the time the question is asked and the time the reporter answers. That is what will happen over a satellite-based phone conversation.

You can't change the laws of physics

 

[Smthkd]

Scott, I thought the SW sats were no longer capable of internet access since they were converted/modified to D* sats instead of the original Hughes SW internet sats!

 

[sfollenius]

No need to bother getting Wild blue to know.

When I was first stationed on Guam, telephone calls to the states were "problematic." I think we had some undersea cables, which introduced echoes and other problems. Then they moved to satellite, I believe. Clear connections, but delays in speaking.

Easy to calculate- correct me if I'm wrong. The geo satellites are about 22,241 miles up. Actually, the distance would be even longer because you are aiming at the satellite at an angle, which increases the distance traveled. But let's go with the best case scenario. The speed of light is about 186,282 miles per second. You speak, the signal travels up to a satellite, down to the other party. That's over 44,000 miles. They hear you about .238 seconds after you speak. They respond- another 44,000 plus miles. You hear a reply no sooner than .477 seconds after you spoke. Small, but annoying and not conducive to a normal conversation.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt- and burned it. Thankfully Guam has fiber today.

See here http://www.telesat.ca/satellites/transmissions/delay-response-times.htm, The echo can be removed using echo cancellation hardware (which the military does use in their multiplexers. I dont think there is any way to overcome the propagational delay I know what you are talking about I was a Tech Controller in the Air Force setting up Circuits using Multiplexers. When we were in Pakistan we set up voice over satellite and the delays were horrible. It was even worse with encryption using the STUIII phones. It was easier to chat over the internet

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Scott, I thought the SW sats were no longer capable of internet access since they were converted/modified to D* sats instead of the original Hughes SW internet sats!

I never said anything about internet on Satellite.

It would be ground based using WIFI life technologies, again Earthlink is testing this with DIrecTV in California.

 

[Bulldog]

It would be nice if a partnership could be reached, if only to share HD locals. If they could share resources, this would relieve each provider of half of their highest-demand bandwidth.

Scott

I agree, D* can share their HD locals with E* and E* can share it's Voom HD with D*. This will help reduce the moving of subs from each other. A cost savings and will compete with cable and reduce the associated lost of subs to cable.

A win win for both companies.

But wait!!

This will cause Cable to sweeten the pot for D* and E* subs.

A win win for all subs

 

[Dish-Direc]

So You Know

If I were Dish I would switch over to NDS. Looks at how good Nagravision 2 has done them. While NDS is unhacked.

I know NDS is NOT unhacked. But that is a topic for another day.

 

[dishcomm]

Yeah WildBlue is mainly going to be for folks that live out in the sticks. Most people will have DSL or Cable but for those who live out in he sticks WildBlue is better than dial up. Overall WildBlue Speeds are not as fast as DSL or Cable and the price for it is kind of high. But this due to their customer base will not be as high due to most folks can get service from their local telco. Again WildBlue is good for those who can only get dial up out in the sticks. When it comes to Internet service where you live will make a difference on what kind of service you can get. It will always vary from state to state.


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Sticks?..Not exactly I live in a county just east of Charlotte in which the western half is booming..Fastest growing county in NC The eastern half is still mainly rural..I can drive 5 miles from my house and find areas that are uncabled and DSL service is unavailable.....It's pretty amazing that even with the Time Warner Franchise agreement in Union County went from a minimum of 35 houses per mile of roadway to 18 and yet 40% of the County is still uncabled....The rub is satellite based internet is expensive for rural folks who live on limited budgets...

 

[Chris Freeland]

BTW what I have heard about this in reguards to internet is not having them use Satellite based INternet, but instead WIFI type access from Earthlink.

They are currently actually testing this in California somewhere.

Yes, this is the way for both E* and D* to go in the urban areas. Wild Blue is good for rural areas that only have the choice between satellite internet or dial-up.

My only question's are how long will it take for E* and D* along with a partnership with Earthlink, will it take to role out this service to urban areas Nationwide? And what kind of speeds are we talking about? I get up to 6mps with Comcast now and more if I paid extra.

 

[Frostwolf]

The digital voice service will work as VoIP service.

Voip on the satellite system would be rather poor. To much time in between the sent and recieved the sent back and recieved voices. Unless they can improve this, it won't be a good alterrnative to a land line, or even a current voip.

Thanks for the news.

 

[navychop]

D* & E* backed away from bidding in the last round of spectrum auctions. Maybe they figure it'll make more sense to deal with another company to achieve the same goal.

Ah, yes, the "wonderful" STU III. After the first few folks got theirs, nobody else was happy to see one appear on their desk. Big key, too- had to go back to a chain around my neck.

 

[John Kotches]

Why would they need to get regulatory approval to share satellites? I could see the approval for a merger but not sharing bandwidth.

Because this is just short of a merger (providing common services).

I'm not against it; I've said here that sharing the infrastructure for LiL would be a great boon for us as consumers. But it's still too close to merging the two companies to be ignored by the FCC.

Cheers,

 

[lovswr]

Well let me add my $0.02 to the latency thing. I was a 29Y (Yankee) Satellite Communications Equipment Repair for 10 years in the Army. Old Ford-Philco stuff desinged around 1978. I was in from 86 to 96.


Now the equipment of today has gotten vastly smaller, quiter, & more efficient (read less heat generated by the amps so they don't have to be air & water cooled) but the physics have not changed. Yes, they have learned how to get closer to "absolute zero" so the noise floor has been "lowered" but the Earth has not gotten any smaller.

Say I'm in SWA (South West Asia ala Kuwait after they were invaded) & I want to talk to some 2 star in NORAD. There is approx 2.5 seconds of delay in this real-time voice call. Like all the DSCS, AFSAT, & MILSTAR birds, both D* &E* are geosychronous. So they are approx 25,000 miles straight up (relative to a stable positon on the ground). That's theory


First hand experience. I'm the asistant NCOIC at DCS Landsthul on top of Landsthul Mt. in Germany (approx 130 kliks south of Frankfurt & about 30 kliks from the extreme Eastern edge of France). Talking to carriers in the MED, you can tell there is delay. Talking to Special Forces in Bosnia you can especially hear the telltale "echo-like" sound of delay from small arms fire as we made the thrice daily comm checks.

Until somebody proves Einstein wrong, there is going to be delay.

 

[Stargazer]

Setting up a 3rd company that they owned 50/50 would be no different than merging, or partial merging.

Maybe NPS should sell DNS, Locals, and HD!

But than after awhile, what's left to justify Dish staying in business as a DBS provider?

Dish can do what it does right now, lease additional transponder space as needed to the "other company(s)" that they may provide programming to.

 

[Stargazer]

Quote: I think equipment compatibility would increase one's chances of switching DBS service more quickly than now.

-------

While that may be true, while one may lose a subscriber to the other, they are going to gain one from the other, just as is being done right now. They are going to save a lot of money by not having to pay a retailer/installer to have to go back out there and reinstall the hardware. They are going to be able to make more hardware in bulk bringing hardware prices down even more since they would use the same setup.

 

[Stargazer]

They MUST do some land-based internet service to stay alive or they will be dead in the water in the future UNLESS they have even lower prices compared to the competition or offer things they do not have.

IPTV is the future of television and telephone service. No broadband, no business. They will have to do a WiMax venture or some other similar type of technology to get this to work to compete against the other big boys or just go out of business unless they can really improve and drop their cost of doing two-way satellite. Two-way satellite is expensive and a lot harder to install than one way systems but then again running fiber is very expensive too. What are the limits on wireless technologies? Would there be more of a limit on wireless or less of a limit? I would want to say less of one seeing that something wireless can be changed faster and easier than a bunch of fiber wires but fiber can hold a heck of a lot but how much is enough to handle bandwidth in the future? You think there are service problems now with install qualities wait until two-way systems would be implemented on a regular basis because you would have seen nothing yet.

Whatever happened to the stratellites where they would have hot air balloons be in the atmosphere to provide these services? They said it would be a lot cheaper than satellites and I thought that looked promising. They could use those for the telephone and internet and use the satellites for television. I am betting new technology such as this or something else will be developed to provide these services in the future as wi-fi / wi-max are affected greatly by rough terrain.

They could do a walkie talkie service like one of the cell phone providers have through the satellite or make it where it beeps after someone says something but that would be hard to have a conversation that way.

Also Didn't Dish and Direct decide to wait a few years for the analog locals to get shut off to use that bandwidth instead for the internet access when they went together to try to get some bandwidth?