# New satellite provider???



## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

This is rather interesting

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Satellite Firm SES Looks for Entry into U.S. Market 

SES Global SA, the 800-pound gorilla among European satellite operators, today will announce a novel but risky bid to jump into the U.S. direct-to-home broadcast market, Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported.

SES proposes to eventually beam hundreds of channels of entertainment potentially reaching millions of American homes -- the first time U.S. customers are served from a foreign-licensed satellite. The initiative, which seeks to replicate its profitable European business model, envisions offering consumers a more flexible range of programming and pricing than do current U.S. satellite TV operators: Hughes Electronic Corp.'s DirecTV and EchoStar Communications Corp.'s (DISH) Dish Network.

This business model, which also features fast Internet access, hasn't been tested in the U.S. and will require SES to forge partnerships with content providers who will then market their programming in ways that won't interfere with any existing deals with DirecTV and Dish. However, SES could face an uphill fight to snare new content or entice programmers away from those systems. The content providers will have to do the brunt of the marketing.

But SES does have a track record. Serving as a wholesaler of satellite capacity by creating an "open" platform accessible to many different programmers able to tailor offerings to targeted consumers is at the heart of SES's profitable European service, which reaches about 87 million homes. The company counts heavyweights such as Viacom Inc., News Corp. and Vivendi Universal SA among its media partners.

The timing of the move, expected to be announced at an industry conference in Carmel, Calif. , is canny. Entrenched U.S. rivals, Hughes and EchoStar, which package and directly market all of their broadcast offerings, will find it hard to strenuously object to competition from SES. That is because they are in the midst of executing a merger (news - web sites) agreement that has met with substantial antitrust concerns.

The move underscores the aggressive strategy of Luxembourg 's SES, which is publicly traded on European exchanges, and which plans to expand its services into North and South America and Asia.

SES Americom, the company's U.S. unit based in Princeton , N.J. , is prepared initially to invest about $250 million to launch a new satellite aimed exclusively at the U.S. market. Dean Olmstead, the unit's chief executive, won't identify potential content providers. But he says SES has gotten an "extremely favorable reaction" from some big players.


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## jrjcd (Apr 23, 2002)

three cheers for competition...


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## Chris Freeland (Mar 24, 2002)

One more development to make the D*E* merger more likely to gain government approval. With this new European DBS provider and the new potential terrestrial DBS providers coming in the not too distant future, any claims that the New E* would be a monopoly is becoming a non-issue. Anyone know what orbital location this new Euro DBS is going to?


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## Geronimo (Mar 23, 2002)

One article said a 105 slot.


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## AllieVi (Apr 10, 2002)

More is better. Good news for consumers.


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## John Walsh (Apr 22, 2002)

Bring it on!!!


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## psecic (Apr 5, 2002)

> _Originally posted by AllieVi _
> *More is better. Good news for consumers.  *


Aren't you jumping the gun just a wee bit? I know a friend who has a big screen television and he just gets four stations with a rooftop antenna. And that doesn't include the new NBC station. He makes sixty nine thousand dollars a year as a teacher and he is too cheap to have cable or satellite.


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## lee635 (Apr 17, 2002)

Well if that's all you really want, then why buy a bunch of channels you don't really want. Maybe, as an educator, he's chosen to not allow tv to take over his life and chooses to spend time reading, volunteering, being with the family, helping seniors, ministering to the sick. 

Nah, he's just cheapo.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Or maybe all he cares about is HD, and other than the couple of satellite channels available, his only option is OTA via antenna.


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## Edward E Suleski (Apr 23, 2002)

This is just an opinion in other words it's not based upon facts but speculation.If the us government grants access to this foreign satellite company (1)More substantial competition for us based cable companies(2)I think Echostar should reevaluate its proposed merger with Directv and think again on a possible three way merger like this E*/D*/Newscorp in my opinion that combination would be a more effective marriage of competition against cable than E/D would be.Oh NewsCorp is one of SES media partners my earlier statement could be a conflict of interest depending upon the nature of SES/NewsCorps media relationship,hmm?


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## Edward E Suleski (Apr 23, 2002)

How does the speed of ses isp rate against a cable modem service such as Road Runner dsl, adsl, dial up etc?


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

It sounds like they want to offer something similar to what c-band does in which you can purchase individual channels. 

Can a seperate program provider use echostar or directv equipment to provide programming to the receivers just like c-band has different providers?


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## Chris Freeland (Mar 24, 2002)

Americom2Home (A*) sounds to me like this will be like a “all digital small dish” version of C-band. Maybe some or all of the remaining C-band program packagers could start their services on this new platform. For those who want to have the “a la carte” option on their channels, this may be the system for them. It also looks like one could go with this system to just compliment what they receive from E*, D* or cable. I also suspect that the equipment to receive A* will be more expensive then D* or E* since A* will not sell programming directly to the consumer, the equipment will probably not be subsidized, we will pay full price.


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## Adam Richey (Mar 25, 2002)

I happen to think that the fact this European company is implementing DBS into the American market is awesome. If the chances for the D*-E* merger were good or fair before, they are now REALLY good now that there would NOT be monopoly like so many people would like to point out as being the main concern of antitrust issues. I think the merger could be AWESOME for both DirecTV and Dish Network customers, but it depends on how the head honchos deal with things.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

Its about time is what I think. It was just a matter of time before this would happen. C-band has to make the move to the small dish somehow, someway. Just because the newer technology comes out to the smaller dish dont mean that we should only get the option to pick and choose our channels on the big dish. 

I think there should be multi-providers on the current directv and dish network receivers we have now, then that would be more competition and then the merger would more than likely be approved, but I dont think Charlie would like that very well. 

Also since all the customers bought their equipment and if they did a swapout the customer could say they wanted to keep the equipment and then still have to be provided with new because they were promised that and then the competition would use the old equipment that we have now to compete, as well as the new.

Could Charlie make everyone trade in their old equipment to get the new equipment for free since he had already promised a free swap-out since the customers have paid for the old equipment or would it be called a swap-out but just converting to the newer system, just like how Primestar went to DirecTv and they just done away with the Primestar equipment.


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