HughesNet now in the Upload Speed Lead....

HughesNet took over the upload speed lead in U.S. shared bandwidth service offerings recently by making the highest level of upload service, 1000 kbps, formerly offered only to Enterprise accounts, available to all of the 7000 series equipment they sell through Value Added Resellers. It requires at least a .98 meter dish and two watt transmitter to work at those speeds and a 1.2 meter dish is recommended for fringe areas like southern parts of Florida, Texas and California.

This level of service and speed is not cheap for the home user at about $400 per month (or more for mobile users), but for Small and Medium companies as well as Emergency Response units, it's the fastest thing short of $3000 per month on a satellite in the U.S. right now! It should enable users to successfully do Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) with multiple lines and improve VPN connections by a fair margin. For those types of businesses requiring larger upload capacity, it will be fast enough to handle multiple surveillance cameras and even limited live broadcast remote capability for smaller Television stations.

Stay tuned......the competition for Business customers is heating up in the U.S. now and HughesNet is trying to lead the way... To learn more about the HughesNet Access 400 service, call Randy Scott @ 866-978-4613.

DirecTV & DishNetwork sign up with Wildblue....

In a startling move today, Wildblue Communications landed both DirecTV Group's DirecTV and EchoStar's Dish Network to 5 year wholesale distribution agreements to offer their Wildblue "powered" ka band internet service to current and future satellite TV customers.

As both of the satellite TV competitors have previously indicated (or the rumor mill suggested), they want into the bidirectional satellite internet business. Why? With the upcoming boom in HDTV, both companies are counting on beating cable companies to the finish line with more channels, better quality high definition and higher dependability. If you are going to capture that much of the market (and I believe they will), why not include broadband and make money on it while you are at it?

Although the initial offerings will require two dishes (which will go over like a lead balloon), as soon as the two companies can transition all HDTV to the ka birds they both own (each has two right now), it will be pretty easy for either DTV or Dish to offer both services on a single dish with what are called multiple LNB's (the device that brings in signals).

I wouldn't look for either DTV or Dish Network to have services available until Wildblue 1 goes up late this year....there just isn't enough capacity right now and I don't believe Wildblue wants to share this bonanza with the folks at Telesat (owners of Anik F2....the current satellite used by WB).

This is turning out to be a very active year in the satellite internet business.......remember, HughesNet will also be getting into the ka band internet game early next year with SpaceWay III. I wonder if they can fashion a deal for TV with anyone?