EchoStar’s Hughes Communications sees a potential slowdown in subscriber additions due to ViaSat...
EchoStar’s Hughes Communications sees a potential slowdown in subscriber additions due to ViaSat launching its Excede satellite-based broadband service, Hughes President Pradman Kaul said on a conference call. But Hughes’ subscriber additions will pick up speed when its new satellite…
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goes into service later this year, he said. The Space Systems/Loral-built Ka-band Jupiter-1, which was renamed EchoStar-17, is expected to launch mid-year aboard an Ariane-5 rocket with a higher-speed HughesNet service to follow in August, industry officials have said. The satellite will deliver up to 25 Mbps downloads. Download speed for a basic package could start at 3-5 Mbps, Arunas Slekys, vice president of corporate marketing at Hughes, told us. EchoStar-17 will have capacity for 1.5 million-2 million subscribers. The current Spaceway-3 satellite, which entered service in 2008, operates with 2 Mbps download/300 kbps upload speeds. HughesNet’s Q4 subscriber base was flat with the previous quarter at 626,000, Kaul said. ViaSat’s Excede is delivering 12 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload speeds. The company also plans to launch in July-August the Space Systems/Loral-built EchoStar-16 Ku-band satellite aboard a Proton M rocket to 61.5 degrees west from Kazakhstan, company officials said. Dish is leasing EchoStar-16’s 32 transponders. EchoStar has $110 million in payments remaining on EchoStar-17 and a $34 million insurance premium, while EchoStar-16 has $65 million and $30 million, company officials said. EchoStar swung to a $22 million Q4 net loss from a $186 million profit a year earlier as it took a $33 million asset impairment charge related to one-time affiliate CMB Satellite. Q4 revenue grew to $834 million from $513 million a year earlier, which didn’t include Hughes Communications.