The satcaster sets a standard $20 monthly charge.
By Phillip Swann

Washington, D.C. (December 22, 2006) — Does EchoStar’s HDTV pricing structure seem a little confusing? Well, if you do, you’re in luck. The satcaster said today that it will make its HDTV programming package a simple $20 monthly addition to any Dish Network package.
For instance, if you subscribe to Dish’s “Top 180″ package for $49.99 — and add the HDTV programming lineup — your monthly price will be $69.99.
Until now, the monthly high-def fee depended upon the number of HD and non-HD channels you received. But now you will get all non-premium HD channels for $20 a month in addition to the basic package price.
EchoStar has 30 national HDTV channels; it also offers local HD channels in some markets.
EchoStar also said overall programming prices will rise about three percent next year. The hike is less than what some cable operators are charging for the new year.

Increases of Dish packages less than average cable hike
By Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News
December 22, 2006

Most Dish customers will pay about 3 percent more next year to watch satellite TV, a smaller increase than most cable customers are facing.
The America’s Top 120 package increases $3 a month to $46, while America’s Top 180 also goes up $3 a month to $56. America’s “Everything” Pack jumps $5 a month. Dish’s most popular package, America’s Top 60, holds the line at $29.99.
Prices for several other packages offered by EchoStar’s Dish Network stay the same: DishFamily remains $19.99, while DishLatino stays at $24.99. All of the prices are effective Feb. 1.
Price increases at cable providers, which are still rolling out their adjustments, are running at about 5.4 percent for basic analog video, according to a report by Sanford Bernstein. That’s still lower than usual. Cable prices increased 93 percent from 1995 to 2005, according to a recent Federal Communications Commission report.
Cable prices are determined in each market, and Comcast hasn’t announced 2007 rates for the Colorado market.
DirecTV, EchoStar’s larger satellite-TV rival, also hasn’t announced next year’s pricing.
Dish Network also is overhauling the names of its programming packages to reflect recent channel additions. America’s Top 60 is now America’s Top 100, a name that encompasses newly added NFL Network, ReelzChannel and, starting in February, 32 Muzak channels. America’s Top 120 becomes America’s Top 200, and America’s Top 180 is now America’s Top 250.
Douglas County-based EchoStar also simplified its high-definition pricing, making it a $20 monthly addition to any other Dish package.
Dish’s price increases were driven by higher programming costs, which increased 8 percent this year.
“We fight to keep our business costs low and make improvements to Dish Network, but we simply cannot offset the unavoidable costs of increased television programming fees,” the company said in a statement.

Liberty Media said this morning it entered into an agreement with News Corp. to exchange Liberty’s 16.3 percent stake in News Corp. for the media giant’s 38.5-percent stake in DIRECTV.

Liberty also picked up regional sports networks controlled by News Corp. in Denver, Pittsburgh and Seattle and cash through the much-anticipated deal.

Other news tidbits coming from the announcement … Liberty said it is expected Chase Carey - a long-time executive with the satellite TV company and News Corp. - will continue to serve as DIRECTV’s president and CEO. Liberty will appoint directors to fill board seats currently held by News Corp. representatives.

The boards of News Corp. and Liberty unanimously approved the transaction.

Liberty said the deal is expected to close in mid-2007. The transaction is subject to regulatory and News Corp. shareholder approvals and the receipt of a private letter ruling from the Internal Revenue Service. In addition to that tax ruling, it’s expected the Federal Communications Commission will scrutinize the deal.

This is just the latest sale involving DIRECTV. In 2002, General Motors, which at the time controlled DIRECTV parent Hughes Electronics, attempted to sell the satellite business to EchoStar, but the deal ran afoul with regulators worried about a combination of the nation’s two biggest DBS platforms. DIRECTV was then sold to News Corp. in late 2003

EchoStar’s Dish Network has added BabyFirstTV, a controversial round-the- clock channel aimed at babies and toddlers, to its lineup.
Dish will offer BabyFirst on a stand-alone basis for $9.99 a month, said Eric Sahl, Dish’s senior vice president of programming, during Charlie Chat with subscribers Monday night. The satellite-TV service is offering a monthlong free preview starting Friday, he said.

Programs targeting babies have been around for years in the form of Baby Einstein and Sesame Street DVDs. Several networks, including Nickelodeon and PBS Kids Sprout, target older children. But BabyFirst is the first 24-hour network aimed at children as young as 6 months old, prompting criticism from the likes of Sen. Hillary Clinton and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

BabyFirst counters that its commercial- free programming was developed with the help of child psychologists and development experts to create a “safe, positive” environment.

“We created BabyFirstTV to provide parents with affordable and age-appropriate content - offering new opportunities to interact with their children,” said Sharon Rechter, executive vice president, business development and marketing and one of BabyFirstTV’s founders, in a statement.

Jody Martin, Dish’s senior vice president of marketing, said the channel emphasizes parent-child interaction and provides a welcome break from watching “the same three videos” over and over.

“No one wants to plunk their kids down in front of the TV,” Martin said. “They want the right content to interact with their child.”

Douglas County-based Dish, the third-largest pay-TV provider with about 12 million customers, joins larger rival DirecTV in offering BabyFirst. The Los Angeles-based network was started by investment fund ****co Capital, Regency Enterprises and Netherlands and Israel-based investment group Kardan.

TECHNOLOGY — Beyond Broadband Technology has developed a new open-standard solution providing set-top box converters a non-integrated downloadable security system that supports both analog and digital signals. Company officials said the goal was to develop a low cost set top what would allow systems to efficiently migrate from analog to digital transmissions.

WIRELESS — AccuWeather.com entered into a content partnership with Mobileplay to be the company’s web weather provider. The deal will allow Mobileplay customers to gain simple access to a range of wireless weather information.

AWS Wireless, a wholly owned subsidiary of NextWave Wireless Inc., announced that on December 18, 2006 the FCC granted the Company all 154 AWS licenses it won in the AWS auction conducted by the Federal Communications Commission in August 2006.

The licenses, located in the 1.7 GHz and 2.1 GHz frequency bands, cover 63 million people and include markets such as Pittsburgh, Puerto Rico, Indianapolis, Sacramento, New Orleans, Tulsa, Little Rock, El Paso, Albany, Louisville, Sarasota, Anchorage, and Fort Myers. During the auction NextWave bid a total of $115.5 million for the 154 AWS licenses at an average price of $0.12 per MHz-POP.

“We applaud the FCC for rapidly granting our AWS licenses and look forward to working with service provider partners to use this valuable spectrum to deliver next-generation wireless broadband services to the market” said Allen Salmasi, president and chief executive officer of NextWave Wireless.

NextWave is currently developing WiMAX semiconductors, device-embedded multimedia software, and other wireless broadband technologies for mobile device and network infrastructure manufacturers and for wireless service operators. Combined with the Company’s existing 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz spectrum assets, the newly granted AWS licenses provide NextWave with a national spectrum footprint that covers approximately 247 million people in the U.S.

AT&T Inc. announced today that AT&T has extended its relationship with DIRECTV, Inc., the nation’s leading provider of digital satellite television service. DIRECTV will continue its current OneNet(R) contract for an additional year at a value of $33 million. AT&T’s OneNet Service provides a flexible solution for companies, like DIRECTV, that have a need for multiple communications technologies.

Under the terms of the agreement, AT&T will continue to provide DIRECTV with toll-free 800, Advanced Features and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Frame Relay services that support 18 call centers and approximately 60 corporate WAN points of presence. AT&T will also begin to provide Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) services, which will allow DIRECTV to employ Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in its call center support and enterprise networks.

“DIRECTV relies on AT&T to connect our vast call center network, ensuring that DIRECTV’s more than 15 million customers have easy access to customer service representatives on a 24/7 basis,” said Mike Benson, executive vice president and chief information officer, DIRECTV, Inc. “The services that AT&T provides for DIRECTV enable us to better control costs while gaining the flexibility that we need in order to support our top-rated customer service operations.”

Earlier this week, the Federal Communications Commission approved a series of measures designed to reform the local video franchise process and enable new multichannel video service providers a quicker entrance into the pay-TV market. The agency said its goals were to increase competition within the video marketplace thereby driving down increasing monthly cable bills.

What about satellite? According to some at the FCC, television services from the likes of DIRECTV and EchoStar’s DISH Network aren’t doing a good enough job at creating a more competitive marketplace and curbing cable rates.

But at a time when satellite services are getting the short end of the stick in a debate it never asked to be a part of, other actions by the FCC have spoken to the technology’s benefits to the entire communications industry.

Also this week the agency granted Intelsat North America conditional authority to modify its earth station in Nuevo, California to provide launch and early orbit phase (LEOP) service to newly launched C-band satellites. The FCC green-lighted Intelsat to increase the emission power at the station for its Earth-to-space transmissions to U.S. licensed or non-U.S. licensed C-band satellites.

Commissioners also approved Virtual Geosatellite’s plan to construct a satellite system of highly-elliptical, non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) fixed-satellite service (FSS) satellites to operate in C- and Ku-band frequencies. Specifically, the agency authorized the company to construct 18 NGSO FSS satellites capable of operating service links, infrastructure and relay links, telemetry, tracking, and command links.

According to FCC documents, after Virtual Geo meets certain orbital debris requirements, the authorization will allow the company to offer a range of data, voice, and video broadband fixed satellite services to businesses and consumers around the globe, and will promote competition and investment in broadband services.

Maybe satellite is creating competition after all.