New York -- DirecTV Inc. is willing to invest as much as $1 billion in a company that would create a third alternative in the United States to cable companies or telephone companies in providing high-speed access to the Internet.
The No. 1 direct-broadcast satellite service would make the investment “if we can intelligently ensure that there’s at least a third entrant” into the market, CEO Chase Carey said Wednesday.
DirecTV would be willing to be “an investor with others in a broadband entity,” Carey said. That “entity” would be responsible for raising the capital to fund its entry into the marketplace, and for construction of the network.
In turn, DirecTV would buy capacity from the company, paying monthly fees at wholesale rates. The investment would be to try to create “vibrant options” for Internet users. “We’d like to see a fourth [entrant], too,” Carey added.
At a meeting with investors at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers here, Carey said DirecTV was in “active” talks aimed at creating a wireless-broadband service on the ground that would allow it to better compete with the bundles of voice, Internet and video services provided by cable companies.
“We are in active discussions with an array of partners,” Carey said, declining to name specific companies DirecTV was talking with but saying they included both technology companies and “spectrum” companies.
Technology companies with significant stakes in the evolution of high-speed-Internet access include chip-maker Intel Corp., phone-gear maker Alcatel, wireless-gear pioneer Qualcomm Inc. and game-system maker Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.
“Spectrum” companies could include cellular-communications companies such as Verizon Wireless or Cingular Wireless, or “broadband-wireless” system builders such as wireless entrepreneur Craig McCaw’s Clearwire Corp.
On stage, Carey said, “We don’t have a broadband announcement” to make. He added that there was no internal deadline for announcing a plan for a terrestrial-communications network to complement its sending of signals from the sky to its more than 15 million subscribers across the country. He joked that Rupert Murdoch -- whose News Corp. is the primary owner of DirecTV -- had given him just five more days in the month to come up with an announcement.
It was Murdoch who first said, at the beginning of January, that DirecTV might spend as much as $1 billion in some sort of broadband network and that details of DirecTV’s plans would come within two months -- loosely translated, by the end of February.
Quipping aside, DirecTV executive vice president and chief technology officer Romulo Pontual said the company was “very, very close” to making a decision on what approach to take on creating a broadband-wireless network. DirecTV could create one on its own or work with a variety of partners.
One possibility, as reported two weeks ago by Multichannel News (www.multichannel.com/article/CA6304962.html?display=Top+Stories), would be a joint effort with satellite rival EchoStar Communications Corp.
MCN also reported that DirecTV is developing technology that would allow it to combine a wireless network on Earth with communications via satellite to offer customers high-speed-Internet and telephone services. On Dec. 13, DirecTV won a U.S. patent for technology that would reduce interference in a combined satellite-terrestrial network.
Pontual, before the investors’ meeting, indicated that the wireless service would include voice communications using Internet protocol and said it would be safe to assume that it would include Internet access, as well -- something that has been hard to deliver via satellite.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6309483.html?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP&nid=2226
The No. 1 direct-broadcast satellite service would make the investment “if we can intelligently ensure that there’s at least a third entrant” into the market, CEO Chase Carey said Wednesday.
DirecTV would be willing to be “an investor with others in a broadband entity,” Carey said. That “entity” would be responsible for raising the capital to fund its entry into the marketplace, and for construction of the network.
In turn, DirecTV would buy capacity from the company, paying monthly fees at wholesale rates. The investment would be to try to create “vibrant options” for Internet users. “We’d like to see a fourth [entrant], too,” Carey added.
At a meeting with investors at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers here, Carey said DirecTV was in “active” talks aimed at creating a wireless-broadband service on the ground that would allow it to better compete with the bundles of voice, Internet and video services provided by cable companies.
“We are in active discussions with an array of partners,” Carey said, declining to name specific companies DirecTV was talking with but saying they included both technology companies and “spectrum” companies.
Technology companies with significant stakes in the evolution of high-speed-Internet access include chip-maker Intel Corp., phone-gear maker Alcatel, wireless-gear pioneer Qualcomm Inc. and game-system maker Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.
“Spectrum” companies could include cellular-communications companies such as Verizon Wireless or Cingular Wireless, or “broadband-wireless” system builders such as wireless entrepreneur Craig McCaw’s Clearwire Corp.
On stage, Carey said, “We don’t have a broadband announcement” to make. He added that there was no internal deadline for announcing a plan for a terrestrial-communications network to complement its sending of signals from the sky to its more than 15 million subscribers across the country. He joked that Rupert Murdoch -- whose News Corp. is the primary owner of DirecTV -- had given him just five more days in the month to come up with an announcement.
It was Murdoch who first said, at the beginning of January, that DirecTV might spend as much as $1 billion in some sort of broadband network and that details of DirecTV’s plans would come within two months -- loosely translated, by the end of February.
Quipping aside, DirecTV executive vice president and chief technology officer Romulo Pontual said the company was “very, very close” to making a decision on what approach to take on creating a broadband-wireless network. DirecTV could create one on its own or work with a variety of partners.
One possibility, as reported two weeks ago by Multichannel News (www.multichannel.com/article/CA6304962.html?display=Top+Stories), would be a joint effort with satellite rival EchoStar Communications Corp.
MCN also reported that DirecTV is developing technology that would allow it to combine a wireless network on Earth with communications via satellite to offer customers high-speed-Internet and telephone services. On Dec. 13, DirecTV won a U.S. patent for technology that would reduce interference in a combined satellite-terrestrial network.
Pontual, before the investors’ meeting, indicated that the wireless service would include voice communications using Internet protocol and said it would be safe to assume that it would include Internet access, as well -- something that has been hard to deliver via satellite.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6309483.html?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP&nid=2226
