Charlie Ergen’s EchoStar satellite operation, despite losing subscribers on its Hughes Network Systems subsidiary, seems committed to launching its own Low Earth Orbiting fleet of satellites.

EchoStar Corp CEO Hamid Akhavan has spoken in the past that Direct-To-Device connectivity from satellite to consumers is a huge opportunity. Now, in releasing the company’s full-year results, he has stressed that while there was no announcement just yet “You are going to hear from us as the year goes on. The market is not as crowded as it seems. It’s crowded with announcements but not crowded with the reality of what’s possible. We have been in service offering D2D messaging in international markets for the past couple of years.”

“We are working on the next generation of connectivity, which goes far beyond messaging. We expect to have broadband connectivity — voice, video, everything you would have on your standard mobile phone, and have it everywhere in the world,” he added.

“The real game is LEO,” Akhavan told analysts. “LEO will be low latency and our solution can provide a natural use case where you can’t tell whether your phone is connected to a ground-based mobile station or to a satellite.”

At the end of last year Hughes Network had 883,000 subscribers, down 12.1 per cent on the same period a year earlier.

As for EchoStar’s Dish DTH service, its revenues fell 5.3 per cent compared with last year and the company ended the year with 7.78 million subscribers (5.69 million for Dish and 2.09 million for Sling TV). Dish and Sling TV between them, lost 253,000 subscribers, although this is an improvement on the net loss of 314,000 in the previous year.

Other posts by :

1. Russian satellite tumbling out of control
2. FCC boss praises AST SpaceMobile
3. Rakuten makes historic satellite video call
4. Rocket Lab confirms D2C ambitions
5. Turkey establishes satellite production ecosystem
6. Italy joins Germany in IRIS2 alternate thoughts
7. Kazakhstan to create museum at Yuri Gagarin launch site
8. AST SpaceMobile gets $42 or $1500 price target
9. Analyst: GEO bloodbath taking place

Categories: Articles, Business, Results, Satellite

Tags: dish, dth, Echostar