The two DBS providers spent far more money on lobbying in the third quarter than a year earlier, analysis of public records shows. Dish Network’s and DirecTV’s combined outlays increased 67 percent.
Tim Warren
Timothy Warren is Executive Managing Editor of Communications Daily. He previously led the International Trade Today editorial team from the time it was purchased by Warren Communications News in 2012 through the launch of Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. Tim is a 2005 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and lives in Maryland with his wife and three kids.
Prospects for the satellite industry remain strong, several satellite executives said Thursday at the SatCon conference in New York. They said the global recession hasn’t hit satellite makers and service providers as hard as other industries. Video programming, particularly in HD, remains a huge growth engine for the industry and shows no sign of slowing, they said.
NEW YORK -- The satellite industry should concentrate on improving spot-beam technologies and the reuse of spectrum as it seeks to integrate the communications it provides with the global information grid that the military uses for much of its mobile communications, Charles Woodson, the chief information officer of the U.S. Space and Missile Defense Command’s satcom division, said on a SatCon conference panel Wednesday.
Customer loyalty among satellite TV subscribers is on the decline, a J.D. Power & Associates survey on TV service satisfaction released Wednesday found. Still, the direct broadcast satellite providers fared better than several top cable companies. The study measured customer satisfaction for TV service providers and found overall satisfaction has declined to the TV industry’s lowest mark in the last five years.
Dish Network seems to be within months of a legislative victory that would free it from a ban on distant signal importation, as Congress moves forward with satellite reauthorization legislation. The Senate Communications Subcommittee plans the first action on the bill in a hearing Wednesday. The House Commerce Committee will take up the bill soon, said a committee aide. The House and Senate Judiciary committees have passed separate versions of the bill leaving the details far from certain, say several congressional officials and lobbyists.
ViaSat will acquire WildBlue Communications for about $568 million, dramatically changing ViaSat’s role in the satellite broadband industry and presenting an immediate use for its newest satellite, ViaSat 1, when it launches in 2011. The acquisition allows ViaSat to quickly join satellite broadband providers without investing a great deal of money in infrastructure, the company said Thursday.
The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday unanimously okayed the satellite TV modernization Act (S-1670), with one amendment and a brief debate that ended with Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., emphasizing the importance of passing a clean bill. The House Judiciary Committee already passed its version of the reauthorization legislation (CD Sept 17 p3), but markups are still needed in the House and Senate Commerce committees.
A new company formed by Harbinger Capital Partners will acquire SkyTerra for $277.5 million and take the publicly traded company private, if shareholders and regulators approve, SkyTerra announced Wednesday. The new company, yet to be named, would pay $5 a share, 56 percent more than the closing price Tuesday, SkyTerra said. The company’s stock price surged almost 39 percent to $4.71 Wednesday in response to news of the acquisition.
Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs), long a provider of internal corporate communications systems, have found a new niche in providing rural Internet service and Internet backup for governments and businesses, industry officials said. While terrestrial fiber lines can provide far faster speeds, VSAT offers higher reliability, functioning without costly infrastructure when land lines are down, a major issue during natural disasters, they said.
Lobbying on the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act grew substantially in the first half of the year, an analysis of public disclosure records showed.