EchoStar is finalizing a joint venture with Vivendi’s...
EchoStar is finalizing a joint venture with Vivendi’s GVT to launch a direct-to-home (DTH) service in Brazil, as testing on the EchoStar-15 satellite that will provide it nears conclusion and a more powerful version is readied for potential 2016 launch,…
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EchoStar Satellite Services President Anders Johnson told us Wednesday at the Content & Communications World show in New York. EchoStar moved the three-year-old EchoStar-15 to 45 degrees west in May and began testing the high-power broadcast service satellite (BSS) to establish a network in Brazil’s various regions. EchoStar bought the orbital slot from the Brazilian telecommunications agency Anatel in 2011 and, with Vivendi’s GVT, must gain license and antitrust approvals to form a joint venture that’s still being finalized, Johnson said. “We are working with GVT on optimizing the pointing of the satellite for service introduction so as to maximize the markets that will be targeted on a primary basis,” Johnson said. They have a presence in certain parts of the country and “have aspirations beyond that.” GVT has about 530,000 subscribers and uses a combination of IP-based and fixed satellite service (FSS), the latter operating at a lower power than BSS and typically requiring a three- to eight-foot receiving dish for Ku band. Intelsat delivers the FSS portion of the video service. Meanwhile, the Space System Loral-built EchoStar-18 will likely launch in Q4 2015 as a Dish Network-owned satellite, EchoStar officials have said. That will be followed by EchoStar-19 multi-spotbeam Ku-band satellite in 2016 that will add capacity for EchoStar subsidiary Hughes Communications’ HughesNet Gen4 broadband service, providing national coverage in North America, Johnson said. EchoStar-19 will deliver 160 Gbps of throughput, providing 60 percent more capacity than EchoStar-17, which currently delivers the HughesNet service. HughesNet added a net 72,000 subscribers in Q3 to end the quarter with 807,000. About 440,000 subscribers were getting service from EchoStar-17 with a large portion of the remainder getting it from the Spaceway-3 satellite.