Nimiq 5 launch and Activation Scheduled
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I saw this the other day. The FCC application from Dish could be conservative on the launch date. The Nimiq 5 launch is still listed as early August on the NASASpaceFlight.com website but another Proton was added recently to the schedule for July 15 - August 15 i.e., AsiaSat-5 so the September date maybe right. The two items of importance regarding the Nimiq 5 launch is better coverage/signal strength from the 72.7 W slot and freeing up the E-6 satellite for use elsewhere like augmenting E-3 at 61.5 W.
The real funny thing about this whole deal is that bell is totally maxed out for space on their current fleet of 2 satellites lol, but their going to lease TP's to Dish?.. Dumb on bells part IMO!
The real funny thing about this whole deal is that bell is totally maxed out for space on their current fleet of 2 satellites lol, but their going to lease TP's to Dish?.. Dumb on bells part IMO!
Nah, Bell makes out very well here. They basically get a giant discount coupon from Dish for a satellite they have been planning to launch anyway. Also, they are not totally maxed out. Most of Nimiq 4 (82W) is switching to 8PSK at the end of this month to add more HD capacity. As for Bell's share of Nimiq 5, as many as half of the transponders on there should become available to them. I suspect that DIRECTV plans to move their locals at 72.5W to the spaces opened up on 110W and 119W by the removal of their duplicate MPEG-2 HD channels. Every transponder DIRECTV clears out of at 72.5W is one that Bell can turn on and use from Nimiq 5 at 72.7W.
The whole Eastern Arc is about HD LOCALS.
The National channels are now a small fraction of the HD Locals. By 2013, Dish must carry all the HD Locals, not just NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX.
I just checked and from 121W/39N a satellite at 72.7W is only 23 degrees elevation. Seattle is even worse at 17.5 degrees elevation. The west cost would be SOL if 110/119/129 didn't exist. The same situation exists for the east coast if 77/72.7/61.5 didn't exist.
Plus one set of satellites couldn't possibly support all the necessary spot beams for locals.
It's not out of the question for newer, larger satellites to be parked over the middle of the US and cover the entire country but it might be more than twice as expensive to design and launch such a satellite system.
People also hate 2 dish solutions. In theory 72.5 is not needed. You could have a 110/119 then also have 61.5, 77 or 129 option for your locals. But, you could only do a single dish for 129, all the 61.5 and 77 users would need 2 dishes. Dish leasing 72.5 is a cheap solution to eliminate the 2 dish issue.
I can't agree with that statement.
Of the 32 transponders at 61.5W, 19 are national beams and mostly carry international and HD channels mirrored from 118W and 129W.
Of the 16 transponders at 72.7W, all 16 are national beams carrying mirrors of national HD and SD channels from 110W and 119W. No local channels.
Of the 16 transponders at 77W, all 16 are national beams. 8 are carrying mirrored national SD and HD channels, and 8 are carrying locals (mostly SD).
Over 67% of Dish's Eastern Arc resources are being used for duplication of national services.
If this is true, and Dish is unsuccessful in fighting the FCC over this policy, then they're going to need a bunch more capacity on the east coast. Unfortunately for them, they've gone and filled up their east coast resources with national channels. Considering their plans to add about 8-10 more national HD channels in the next few weeks, with more to come during the course of the year, the bandwidth shortage for EA is only expected to get worse. Either picture quality will go downhill or some channels will have to get bumped. You know which one of these it will be since SD quality on EA has been unsatisfactory from the beginning, more SD channels are being desperately squeezed onto transponders that already have 7 HD channels, and some transponders already have more than 7 HD channels on them.
If they want to make better use of 77W, they're going to need to use spotbeams. Echostar 8 has spotbeams and is parked at 77W, but those beams aren't being used for locals at this time. Your guess is as good as mine about why that might be.
Both 72.7W and 77W would benefit hugely from 8PSK. I expect them to switch to 8PSK for 72.7W once Nimiq 5 is up since that would add at least 140Mbps to the capacity there. However, I also expect that capacity to be gobbled up by a combination of new national HD programming being added and relieving some of the overcrowding of HD channels that has been going on for a few months on 61.5W.
That may be true now, but the 77W replacement, Quetzsat-1, should have a lot of spotbeams. No word on what the E3/R1 replacements will have, but it's safe to assume they will have spotbeams, too. The EA is mostly made up of space junk right now.
The E8 spotbeams aren't used as they are pointing at the wrong places (it was designed for 110), and many are pointing at non-EA west coast markets. Using them wouldn't save much.
Also, 61.5 is no more overcrowded than any Dish HD transponder. Don't know what your getting at, there.
This is why I mentioned trees and dish height before. I'm on the east coast, and I've actually tossed a dish out in the snow and had a strong signal from 61.5W in no time. To get 110W and 119W however, I had to put a Dish 500 at the top of a roof that is unavoidably facing tall trees (at a reasonable distance, maybe 125ft away). That has been working for 9-10 years with no major problems yet. Angle for 119W is 22 degrees. What I'm trying to say is that is that you have to go really far east and park your dish right in front of tall trees to not actually be able to receive 110W and 119W. The push to 129W was unreasonable, and Dish should have gone slightly east to somewhere like 105W with a nice Ka-band bird that handily covers the whole country. Instead, they launched yet another Ku-only sat (Ceil II) and put it out of range of a lot more of the east coast than 119W. Lots of Ka-band orbital locations were available for the taking, but they opted for an undesirable Ku-band slot.
For Dish's HD subscribers in east, they now have no choice but to switch to Eastern Arc. For everybody else in the east, which is the majority, there isn't any compelling reason to switch. If Dish is trying to pick up new subs in the east solely based on the possibility of a slightly easier dish installation (which makes life easier for installers, not subscribers) and the aesthetic difference of having two little dishes instead of one larger one, I don't see the investment as being worthwhile.
See DIRECTV.
The cost of launching and maintaining a single set of satellites, not to mention all of the resources on the ground, would be less in the long run. Dish now has to manage two sets of satellites in orbit, two sets of uplink sats, manage and operate duplicate encoders for every channel on the platform, retrain installers and customer service, and so on. The largest expense is likely to come from having to launch replacements. Periodically sats need to be replaced, and now there will be twice as many that they have to replace.
DIRECTV very much knew what they were doing when they did their satellite expansion for national and local HD. Dish Network just seems to have cobbled together one of the worst ideas they could think up and never looked back. Dish already had to launch two new satellites (Echostar 11 and Ceil II) and are planning to launch a replacement for Echostar 7, plus now they are paying for permission to use a Canadian satellite. They're spending plenty of money on satellites, but only some of it is being spent well.
Oh joyous joy, more replacement satellites for orbital locations that they shouldn't even be using in the first place. Don't forget that they still only have "Temporary Special Authority" to operate at 77W. They have to pay the Canadians for use of that slot in addition to 72.7W.
They could have launched Ka-band sats at 97W or 105W for national and local HD and get good coverage for the whole country from both. This would have allowed them to stop using far-west and far-east satellites for anything but SD locals and international channels that have been on those satellites for ages, greatly simplifying their entire operation. They didn't do this.
Possibly even better, they could have stuck with their 110/119/129W plan in the west and launched a single Ka+Ku sat for 61.5W and easily run the entire EA operation off of that one orbital location. It would have fit together perfectly with their need to design a new dish for EA and their goal to only sell receivers that support H.264 and 8PSK. They didn't do this either.
Unless I'm missing a huge piece of the puzzle, what they did and are currently doing is very sloppy and will be very costly in the long run. Of course, as long as it only costs the subscribers and not the company, this kind of nonsense is likely to continue or even become worse.
I was under the impression that spotbeams can be aimed to point at different locations. Also, if they were mostly pointing to the west before, and the satellite itself used to be 33 degrees further to the west than it is now, it seems like many of the beams should be falling on or closer to eastern markets now. Maybe they're all just landing in the middle of nowhere though. Hmm...
It is more overcrowded. On 110W, there are still at least two transponders with only 4 HD channels in the mux, and most others have 7. On 61.5W, 7 HD channels plus a few SD channels seems to be the minimum, and 8 HD channels are present on some transponders. I can try to get actual counts later today.
61.5 does not really have a capacity issue. They are moving internationals off which will free up TPs (TPs #8, 12, 14, 18, 29, 31). TP 10 is mostly PI. Plus 4 TPs are out on E3. Dish has indicated they want to move another satellite over (E6) as soon as NIMIQ5 gets into place.
That would be 10 more TPs. They will probably use a few of them for spots. E12 can convert more TPs from CONUS to spot to help pick up more secondary locals for the markets already covered. Plus once the new 77 bird goes up they will have more capacity at 77.
That would be 10 more TPs. They will probably use a few of them for spots. E12 can convert more TPs from CONUS to spot to help pick up more secondary locals for the markets already covered. Plus once the new 77 bird goes up they will have more capacity at 77.
Are the internationals just being moved to a different EA satellite or are they only going to be available to "Western Arc" subs? The former would effectively accomplish nothing unless they are switched to H.264, and the latter goes against the "single dish solution" argument. I like the idea that this would free up much-needed capacity, but it sounds like something is missing here.
I was aware of the other potential capacity improvements with the exception of the dead transponders on E3. Thanks for that info
. While it all means that eventually capacity improvements will be made for EA, none of this does anything to convince me that maintaining two separate sets of satellites, investing in a Canadian satellite (Nimiq 5), and renting capacity from Canadian orbital locations (72.7W and 77W) is a good plan compared to either developing a good national satellite system or to run EA off of one really good, new Ka+Ku satellite in a USA orbital slot with a good Ku-band sat like E8 as an emergency backup. Of course, it's too late now for them to go back and do things differently. I suppose more than anything I'm still thoroughly baffled by why they ever thought this was a good idea in the first place since it will make their operating costs substantially higher than ever before for the company (and therefore the subscribers) without offering a substantial advantage in comparison to alternative approaches.I recall reading a few days ago that Charlie didn't anticipate the operational complexity of some of the changes they made recently, and I would guess that EA makes up the bulk of that complexity.
The real funny thing about this whole deal is that bell is totally maxed out for space on their current fleet of 2 satellites lol, but their going to lease TP's to Dish?.. Dumb on bells part IMO!
Actually Bell doesn't own any satellites. They lease their bandwidth.
They have been moving internationals to 118.7 Ku FSS service.
Dish can put up all of EA for less than it cost for DIRECTV to put up their Ka satellites (more like 1/4 - 1/2 the price). DIRECTV went with Ka to salvage satellites they were going to use for internet access. It was a multibillion dollar cost, they took a couple billion dollar write down on the conversion.
Dish can put up all of EA for less than it cost for DIRECTV to put up their Ka satellites (more like 1/4 - 1/2 the price). DIRECTV went with Ka to salvage satellites they were going to use for internet access. It was a multibillion dollar cost, they took a couple billion dollar write down on the conversion.
I guess I wouldn't mind this whole situation so much if the FCC forced Dish Network to split into two companies on some level. They're running two separate services, but charging the subscribers on each side for the resources on their service (east or west) and for the other service. It's almost like they're trying to run a cable company that serves two different markets, but they're doing it from space. State regulators would be unlikely to allow a cable company to raise rates in order to pay for equipment being installed and used exclusively in another state. In this case, the FCC should probably be taking some kind of action to stop Dish from incorporating any fees in Western Arc programming packages that go towards Eastern Arc and vice versa. That would probably make me happy, except for the fact that rates will continuously go up no matter what happens.
That was option number two then, going against the "single dish solution" argument.
That's some interesting info, thanks. I wonder if the price of Ka satellites has come down since DIRECTV bought theirs. I also wonder why Dish co-owns a Ka+Ku+C bird parked at 121W that they have never used the Ka-band functionality on. Echostar owns the Ku and Ka-band parts of Echostar 9, and while there are only two Ka-band transponders on-board, it seems like they should be used for something. If it's putting out power well, it would be a nice replacement for E12/R1 at 61.5W since it's rather weak in comparison to E11 at 110W.
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