May 31, 2009, post by Satellite News
Ofcom, the media regulator, is facing costly legal action in the High Court after becoming involved in a space race between US and UK satellite providers.
The action is being brought by ICO Global Communications, one of several companies competing for the right to broadcast on the valuable “S-band” frequency, which offers the potential to deliver mobile television technology, digital radio and broadband from the skies.
The American satellite provider has decided to challenge Ofcom in the courts after the regulator suggested that it should be stripped of its license to broadcast on S-band for failing to make sufficient use of the frequency.
Several companies are currently engaged in a turf war over this next-generation spectrum with multi-billion pound contracts at stake.
The European Commission this week awarded a contract worth an estimated £2bn to FTSE 100 company Inmarsat and the Dublin-based company Solaris, which will give them the right to operate satellite services on S-band across the continent.
This means ICO has been left out in the cold by both Europe and the UK – leading it to challenge Ofcom and, possibly, the European Commission in the courts. Sources close to Ofcom suggested that ICO has not been using its license fully for many years, leading to accusations that it was “hogging” the UK frequency by preventing others from using the lucrative spectrum.
The S-band frequency is currently used by astronauts and weather radars, but satellite providers believe it will become instrumental in the way technology is provided for consumers over the next few years.
“S-band is an incredibly valuable bit of global real estate,” said Chris McLaughlin of Inmarsat. “It’s the means by which we can enable 3G and 4G all across Europe and we are building a capable satellite at the moment. The original vision was mobile television, but there’s the potential for much more.”
Inmarsat, the British company, believes it could have a satellite up and running by 2012, which could be used to create a Europe-wide security system as well as consumer entertainment such as mobile television.
Analysts believe the real value of S-band will come from partnerships between satellite and mobile phone companies.
Ofcom confirmed that ICO had applied for to the High Court for permission to launch a judicial review, adding that its recommendation is separate from the European Commission’s decision not to award ICO any spectrum.
“Ofcom is considering the application and will publish its response shortly,” an Ofcom spokesman said.
May 31, 2009, post by Satellite News
Renowned scientist Dr Samar Mubarik Mand has said that Pakistan would send satellite in space by 2011.
He said, addressing an annual convocation at Institute of Space Technology (Sparco) here on Saturday, that Pakistan must have possibility to defend and needs nuclear power.
Dr Mubarik reiterated the resolve that Pakistan nuclear assets were in safe hands and no one needs to worry about it.
He said that Pakistan would send its indigenous satellite in space by 2011, adding, the space system of Pakistan would not be only for defense needs only but would be also used to develop mines reservoirs, flood and agriculture.
He said that war with India could have been broken out after Kargil and Mumbai incidents if had Pakistan not been nuclear power.
Samar Mubarik said that Pakistan nuclear assets were safe and its builders know how to protect them and a country could not make progress without human resources.
May 31, 2009, post by Satellite News
TECHNOLOGY providers and television enthusiasts want all their TV on the Web, and they are tired of waiting for Internet companies and content owners to make it happen.
Charles Ergen, a chairman of EchoStar is a owner of Sling Media and its technologies.
The Slingbox Pro-HD, top, and the Sling-Loaded ViP 922, a digital video recorder that Dish Network will offer as a set-top box.
But such an entertainment revolution already exists — at least for owners of a silver and black gadget called the Slingbox.
For the last five years, this device, which looks like it was plucked from the set of a “Star Trek” movie, has allowed users to pipe all their existing cable and satellite channels onto the Internet and over to any computer or cellphone.
Nevertheless, Sling Media, the five-year-old Silicon Valley company that makes the Slingbox, has been easy to overlook. Sling’s stand-alone hardware products, which start at $180 and plug into televisions, have been largely confined to the homes of a few hundred thousand technology geeks who love the cutting edge and don’t mind braving the dust devils behind their entertainment centers to get there.
Sling was acquired in 2007 by EchoStar, the satellite TV firm that then split into two public companies: the consumer TV business Dish Networks, and the Echostar Corporation, which owns Sling and is entirely devoted to developing and licensing digital equipment for the television industry. Under its new owner, Sling is about to become a lot more prominent. Now the question is whether EchoStar’s stewardship will propel Sling into most American homes, or just relegate it to the wayside on the road to convergence of TV and the Internet.
The first real test for the new Sling will come this summer, when Dish plans to offer a set-top box embedded with Sling’s features to its 14 million subscribers across the country. Called the SlingLoaded HD DVR ViP 922, it will be offered to subscribers for $199.
Part of EchoStar’s plan is to then license Sling technology to other satellite and cable TV operators and consumer electronics companies. The idea of “place shifting” or “Slinging” shows to any device, the company hopes, will become a standard trick performed by most high-end cable boxes.
But first EchoStar needs to find other TV companies that like the idea of Sling as much as it does. That could be a challenge.
Many television networks and cable operators are currently engaged in competing efforts to send their programming directly to their own Web sites and to online video hubs like Hulu.com. They are also building technology to identify online the customers who currently pay for television, so they can make available to them programs from paid-cable networks like HBO and the Discovery Channel online as well.
“There seems to be a couple of other ways of doing the same thing as Sling without a hardware-based approach,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research. “Sling has not yet been proven to be something that is a must-have for a wide audience.”
Sling executives say their technology gives consumers everything they want and offers cable and satellite companies a way to hang on to their paying customers. Consumers can see the same channels on the Web or on their phones, in the same order that they have grown accustomed to on their own home televisions. If they also own a DVR like a TiVo, they can also see all the programs they have saved. (The company complements that selection with old episodes of programs on Sling.com, a site similar to Hulu.)
And cable operators can extend the reach of their traditional programming lineups and prevent their users from flocking to Web video sites, which have fewer and less valuable ads.
Sling also offers cable and satellite companies an easy way to get television to a variety of mobile devices without having to develop specific video services for each. Sling recently released a $29.99 application for the Apple iPhone, for example, although AT&T insisted that it work only over WiFi, and not over the carrier’s 3G network. AT&T said it feared that Sling’s streaming video could hog its bandwidth and lead to dropped calls.
But network congestion may be the least of EchoStar’s problems. In selling the Sling concept to other television and satellite companies, EchoStar will likely run headlong into something even more formidable: longstanding industry grudges.
The chairman of both EchoStar and Dish Network is Charles W. Ergen, the satellite television pioneer who has had business skirmishes with companies like Viacom, Liberty Media, AT&T and Sirius XM. (Mr. Ergen declined to comment for this article.)
In the television business, memories can be long. To some cable and TV executives, the idea of licensing Sling, even if they covet the technology, might feel a little like climbing into bed with a fierce competitor.
“He’s got a hard slog in the U.S. If you are an overseas cable operator and you don’t compete with Dish, maybe there is an opportunity,” said John C. Malone, chairman of Liberty Media and a major shareholder of DirecTV, in a brief interview last week at a tech conference.
Echostar seems to understand such sentiment. Mr. Ergen, besides being chairman of both Dish and EchoStar, is a major shareholder in the two. But Echostar executives emphasize that they are now separate companies.
“It’s probably our biggest obstacle: the politics of common ownership,” said Mark W. Jackson, president of an EchoStar division. “We believe that if we build the best product, they will decide to do business with us. That’s what we are trying to prove to everyone.”
The future of Sling and its Internet vision probably depend on it.
