ECHOSTAR is Suing the FCC

Just what DISH /Echostar needs, another lawsuit. Now I know what all the made up ,charge it because we can, DISH FEES are all about: to be able to pay their lawyers monthly bills!:eek:
 
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Two separate companies on paper, but both owned and run by the same chairman Charlie Ergen. The two companies are interdependent on each other . DISH uses Echostar equipment and satellites and Echostar sells their services and equipment to DISH.
 
Still two different companies. ;)

Shhhh... Maybe if we pretend there is no relations, all of the problems will go away! :D Nothing to see here, move on! LOL! Seriously, Everyone knows that yes they technically are two separate companies on paper, but they both know who's pocket the cash is going into! It's like saying Fox and Newscorp are not related at all when everyone knows that is not the case. Echostar is the parent company of dish, and even though on paper they are separate, that won't stop the FCC from messing with dish. Its collateral damage by association.
 
Still two different companies. ;)

But not in the eyes of the FCC. In 2011, Dish/Echostar tried to get past the FCC rules limiting the number of licensed but unbuilt satellites (the 86.5W slot) by claiming that Dish/Echostar were two different comanies and each could have the max number of licensed but unfilled slots. FCC pierced the corporate veil and said "no way, they are both controlled by one majority stockholder and are considered as one entity when counting up the number of unbuilt satellites".

So, sometimes different companies and sometimes not.
 
Just got this in my email box... I haven't had time to read it over, but it appears Echostar (not DISH) is suing the FCC over some Plug and Play Law...

You can read more details at EchoStar v. FCC & USA, No. 04-1033 & 04-1109 (D.C. Cir.) | FCC.gov

Looks like Echostar wants to sell consumers cable boxes & cable DVRs like the Plug & Play rules encourage. The cable companies don't want to release their encoding & authorization information and the FCC won't make them.
 
Looks like Echostar wants to sell consumers cable boxes & cable DVRs like the Plug & Play rules encourage. The cable companies don't want to release their encoding & authorization information and the FCC won't make them.

Go ECHOSTAR. Even the naysayers should be behind Charlie on this one.
 
Ok if I am reading this correctly and who but a lawyer really can, it seems to me that the heart of the act referenced here was to allow for vendors other than the cable companies and sat providers to make STBs that would work on the providers networks. Can't speak for other providers but I've never seen a STB that I could buy for dish or direct service that didn't come from those providers. We have comcast in this area and you have to get their box for their service and the wife has worked in cox territory and guess what? They are the only ones that could provide a STB for their service. So unless I read this wrong or missed something, once again the FCC has spent boat loads of my tax dollars and has nothing to show for it other than spending more of my money in the courts defending what they have not done. Wouldn't it be great if I could go to bestbuy and pickup some really spiffy STB to work with my dish service? Call dish give them a smartcard number and away I go.
 
But were you ever able to buy those boxes from other than Directv or one of their resellers? Direct at one time was Hughes/Directv and remained tied to Hughes until 2006. There was a point in time when they contracted Thomas communications (part of the RCA brand) to do hardware. I'm not sure where Phillips and Samsung fall in Direct's lineage but I suspect they were contracted by Direct at some point to produce hardware. I could definitely be wrong but I don't believe there was a time that you could walk into an electronic retailer and just purchase a STB for either Direct or Dish that was not selling their service, and receiving the STBs for sale from either Direct or Dish. So the while in your example Samsung was building boxes for Direct, Samsung could not sell those same boxes direct to a retailer, unless perhaps that retailer was selling Direct service.

Imagine the innovations we might see if STB production was open to the entire electronics market. So the provider, let's use Dish as example, would provide a spec of how they would deliver and encode the signal. They require the use of a smartcard so that the boxes could be activated and only subscribed programing would be decoded, but beyond that the manufacturers would be free to build in any bells and whistles they wanted to differentiate their box from others. Much like cable or dsl modems and routers. You can go out and buy pretty much any you like. You decide how much or how little you wish to spend depending on the features, warranty and reliability you wish to have. Remove R&D costs from the carriers, the hardware costs etc. Carriers could then invest those funds to improve their networks. They could contract any one of the manufacturers to sell them gear for those who choose not to buy their own but rather have the carrier drop everything at the door for them, but those costs would be minimal compared to being the only supplier of hardware and having all the R&D expense, inventory expense, repair/refurb expense etc.
 
Go ECHOSTAR. Even the naysayers should be behind Charlie on this one.

I wouldn't yes having the equipment propitiatory might cost a little more but open it up to other manufactures just starts the finger pointing game when a problems happen
if one had cable with a junky box and you had a problem who would you call the cable company would blame the box and the box company would blame the signal.
at least with one company they have to take ownership
 
I wouldn't yes having the equipment propitiatory might cost a little more but open it up to other manufactures just starts the finger pointing game when a problems happen
if one had cable with a junky box and you had a problem who would you call the cable company would blame the box and the box company would blame the signal.
at least with one company they have to take ownership

I take it then you are against Boxee, unencrypted QAM, and Cablecard, huh?
 
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