The U.S. mass market is getting its first taste of two-way broadband satellite services this winter. And those serving up the new product are getting an education in what possibly could be some contentious usage management issues.
In this age of Napster and MP3, service providers such as StarBand Communications Corp. and Hughes Network Systems are plunging into uncharted territory, where a download-intensive operating environment is a certainty.
"If usage is the key, satellite broadband providers will have to vigorously monitor the voracious appetite of Internet users to make sure the models work today and tomorrow," says William Kidd, a vice president and analyst at New York-based investment firm C.E. Unterberg, Towbin. "We believe the increasing popularity of bandwidth intense applications, such as music and movies, could pose a risk to using today's usage assumptions as a guiding light and give a false confidence as to what level of service will be acceptable tomorrow."
The two major players leading off in this business are StarBand Communications Corp., which is a partnership of Gilat Satellite Networks, Microsoft and EchoStar Communications, and Maryland-based Hughes Network Systems with its newly upgraded DirecPC product.
RadioShack Corp., which is selling a bundled product with a PC, was the first to put StarBand in its stores under the banner of Microsoft's MSN HighSpeed Satellite Internet Access. It has rolled out StarBand only as integrated solution complete with a Compaq PC, which boosts the price well over $1,000. RadioShack did not respond to a request for its early sales results for StarBand. |
