Dish Network considers $10 billion 5G network instead of spectrum sale

went back digging and found this late July article that sums up the state of affairs.
He has to cover 70 percent of the population in his markets by march 2020 or his first batch of licenses are toast.
It's probably not physically possible to do in that time frame even if he has the money to spend.

Dish chairman Charlie Ergen is running out of time on his $20 billion bet
 
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Sometimes I wonder about these things. For example: in this article it is said they believe satellite service is essentially on its way out:

"satellite broadcasting — and Dish — were effectively relegated to niche status."

How much broadband demand can the internet infrastructure accommodate? I have neighbors within the city limits that have 1g broadband service and they tell me that they still have buffering issues during periods of high demand.
 
Sometimes I wonder about these things. For example: in this article it is said they believe satellite service is essentially on its way out:

"satellite broadcasting — and Dish — were effectively relegated to niche status."

How much broadband demand can the internet infrastructure accommodate? I have neighbors within the city limits that have 1g broadband service and they tell me that they still have buffering issues during periods of high demand.
Its the site they are accessing

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"satellite broadcasting — and Dish — were effectively relegated to niche status."
.

Will be relegated to niche status. I've been saying this for years. It will become a product that caters to rural. Then the cost will begin to soar higher and higher, just like newspapers, until it dies a slow and painful death.
 
Sometimes I wonder about these things. For example: in this article it is said they believe satellite service is essentially on its way out:

"satellite broadcasting — and Dish — were effectively relegated to niche status."

How much broadband demand can the internet infrastructure accommodate? I have neighbors within the city limits that have 1g broadband service and they tell me that they still have buffering issues during periods of high demand.

Well, you can always add more throughput by running more fiber or upgrading the equipment at either end of the fiber. There will be physical limits, but my understanding is there is a lot of runway left before we get anywhere close to those. Also, better encoding (e.g. HEVC), reduces bandwidth requirements for a given video stream. Of course, (some) people are wanting UHD, which more than eliminates the efficiencies of the better encoding. I for one have AT&T Fiber, and I rarely see any buffering. When I do, it is usually on HBOGo, for whatever reason.
 
If you have a decent broadband plan buffering is rarely related to the bandwidth available from the ISP at your home, some frequent causes, your ISP not having sufficient peering capacity, your ISP refusing to allow caching servers on its network, your ISP artificially restricting speed from designated origination points, the information provider having a poorly provisioned CDN (NHL.TV did this in its first year after changing providers), the information provider not having enough capacity at the server end, network latency from your device to the information provider and back.

Oh, make sure your wireless network is up to snuff.
 
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Will be relegated to niche status. I've been saying this for years. It will become a product that caters to rural. Then the cost will begin to soar higher and higher, just like newspapers, until it dies a slow and painful death.
Never go away . The satellites costs and delivery uplink costs are very small in the scheme of things. Those relatively small fixed costs are expensed over a 10-15 year period

Program costs are the supermajority of costs.

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Never go away . The satellites costs and delivery uplink costs are very small in the scheme of things. Those relatively small fixed costs are expensed over a 10-15 year period

Program costs are the supermajority of costs.

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using the SatelliteGuys app!

Doesn't matter how expensive or inexpensive the infrastructure is, nor does it matter how efficient or inefficient that delivery system is, if there aren't any customers. Statistics show more and more people moving to IP delivery where broadband is available. Underserved rural areas are and will continue to be satellite's highest area of consumption for the forseeable future
 
Doesn't matter how expensive or inexpensive the infrastructure is, nor does it matter how efficient or inefficient that delivery system is, if there aren't any customers. Statistics show more and more people moving to IP delivery where broadband is available. Underserved rural areas are and will continue to be satellite's highest area of consumption for the forseeable future

That could eventually level out or turn around, some. The price of streaming is going up all the time. It will get to the point that it will cost as much if not more than cable/DBS. DBS is has certainly reached maturity, and there will likely be no more huge growth, but it will probably begin to stabilize eventually.
 
Underserved rural areas are and will continue to be satellite's highest area of consumption for the forseeable future
What goes around comes around. It began with ala-carte BUD's and while the dish size shrank there are indications we just might be headed back to at least some form of ala-carte again and once again a suburban/country market. As for 5G it seems to me that there is a conflict between market and technology. 5G's market is projected to be cities/urban areas but the one major drawback of the technology is it's inability to penetrate walls due to the small size of the wave. So on the surface it would seem it's market is exactly where it won't work best.
 
What goes around comes around. It began with ala-carte BUD's and while the dish size shrank there are indications we just might be headed back to at least some form of ala-carte again and once again a suburban/country market. As for 5G it seems to me that there is a conflict between market and technology. 5G's market is projected to be cities/urban areas but the one major drawback of the technology is it's inability to penetrate walls due to the small size of the wave. So on the surface it would seem it's market is exactly where it won't work best.

I think the best case scenario for broadband in rural areas going forward might be LEO satellites and small cells. Both are big investments, though, and no promise of big returns. My bordering state of Missouri is looking at rural broadband incentives to encourage ISP's to bring faster speeds to the underserved areas, but based on the botched exploits of such initiatives in New York State, I'm dubious of them.

This morning, I had a lengthy conversation with 2 field techs from Consolidated Communications. I asked them if (and when) broadband speeds over 20 mbps might be coming to my town. They said they have been laying fiber and working on it, but that the company is extremely cautious and conservative about rolling out faster speeds in small towns. I think this must just be a common denominator with regards to rural broadband. Residents tend to be less affluent and farther apart, and laying down large swaths of fiber isn't cost effective.

It's "the cost we pay to live in paradise!"
 
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What goes around comes around. It began with ala-carte BUD's and while the dish size shrank there are indications we just might be headed back to at least some form of ala-carte again and once again a suburban/country market. As for 5G it seems to me that there is a conflict between market and technology. 5G's market is projected to be cities/urban areas but the one major drawback of the technology is it's inability to penetrate walls due to the small size of the wave. So on the surface it would seem it's market is exactly where it won't work best.

5G will work over 600MHz just fine. It won't be quite as fast as the high frequency stuff, but it should work very well for rural broadband. Not sure why T Mobile was the only one of the big four to spend big on that spectrum.
 
Maybe Mr. L is just smarter than the “big guys.” He certainly seems to be eating their lunch. He’s shown he knows how to shake up a market.


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Maybe Mr. L is just smarter than the “big guys.”

Maybe. He's got a long way to go before I come back to the fold. I have a 45-minute drive to work every morning and I sometimes have to make business calls along that drive. TMO coverage is absent for most of that drive. Until I see him making a significant effort to engage rural customers I'm sticking with Big Red.
 
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