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To: Satellite Mike who wrote (863)6/27/1998 1:17:00 AM
From: Frank Byers  Respond to of 1394
 
You heard it!! Yeah, and the great part (for us, not the telco's) is that their xdsl doesn't work for shi@ over 80% of their lines, but it will work good enough to do what you suggested, ie use it for a "high speed" return path to the central office router. Use DISH broadcast data feed for the high speed downlink to the 80% of the population (or whatever it is) that they can't serve properly with xdsl. This is sounding better all the time... Now all we have to worry about is Primestar, since they are going to be sold by the cable guys, I suspect Sprint is cyphering right now on that one. But, if someone like Sprint buys Primestar, it just validates the whole scenario and DISH will go up anyway. At the least, this possibility should put a floor on DISH share price while they build up the subscriber base and get closer to breakeven.

Happy days....

FB



To: Satellite Mike who wrote (863)6/27/1998 7:01:00 PM
From: John J. Thrall  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1394
 
The problem with this is that everytime a user requests a new internet page over the phone line that request would go to the uplink station, be retrieved over a network, beamed up to the sat, and then come to the user. This would be fast at first, but imagine 100,000 users requesting unique page downloads! Maybe it would work, I don't know, but DirectPC is already out and hasn't done very well as I recall.

Anyone got ideas on how dish is going to pay off all this debt? Its first payments start next year. One word - stock (a lot of it) Remember that the more subs DISH gets the worse its bottom line (costs hundreds per sub added). They recoup this cost in profits b/c margins on subscription are about 50% (37.50x.5x12 = $225 a year profit), and we thought this was great. But this means it takes two years to recoup costs, and with proces dropping like a rock the loyalty issue will be interesting - I waited on hold for over one hour when I called the service center a few weeks back (girl was nice, said charlie asked them to talk to relatives and friends to get them to come and work at DISH!). Also, digital cable is right around the corner, and is an option here in Seattle. Just some thoughts

John