FCC Extends WildBlue Sat Launch Deadline by a Year

[Chris Blount]

On Tuesday, the International Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission granted a request from WildBlue for a one-year extension of its June 25 milestone requirements to launch and operate its own Ka-Band satellite, WildBlue 1.

At the moment, WildBlue, which unveiled its long-anticipated satellite broadband service in June, uses Telesat Canada's Anik F2 satellite for Ka-Band capacity. In its grant of WildBlue's application, the FCC bureau cited bankruptcy matters at Loral, which is manufacturing the WildBlue 1 satellite, and issues tied to an in-orbit failure of a similar satellite as reasons for its deadline extension.

However, the bureau didn't grant WildBlue's requested 18-month extension of time. The bureau said its one-year extension, to June 25, 2006, will provide the company sufficient time in which to launch WildBlue 1.

http://www.skyreport.com (Used with permission)

[ilovedbs]

Wild Blue will serve the people without DSL or Cable well. They just need to work on their upload speeds.

[Nick]

WildBlue said David Leonard will join the company on Sept. 1 as its CEO. Leonard comes to the fledgling satellite broadband company from Liberty Global, where he served as president of the company's Latin America division.

Meanwhile, Tom Moore, WildBlue's co-founder and current CEO, will relinquish day-to-day operating responsibility next month. He will stay actively involved with the company as a shareholder and board member, the company said.

"WildBlue has been my third child since the beginning. I love this company and continually want the very best for it. My contribution has always been in formulating ambitious dreams and starting things from scratch," said Moore in a statement. "WildBlue now needs a world-class operating CEO to drive the company to the next level of success - Dave has those incredible talents and I am really looking forward to seeing what he is able to accomplish."

Said Mark Carleton, senior vice president of Liberty Media and chairman of the board for WildBlue, "WildBlue has benefited greatly from Tom Moore's technical vision and entrepreneurial insight during the building of this venture, and we thank him for all he has done for WildBlue in an operating role since the company's inception. We look forward to his continued involvement at the board level."

Prior to working for Liberty Global, Leonard was founder and CEO at VeloCom, which established a competitive local exchange carrier in Latin America. He also has served as either CEO or board member of several foreign and domestic entities including VTR in Chile, Cablevision in Argentina, U.S.-based Metrocall Wireless, United International Holdings, Kabelvision in Sweden, and United Cable of Colorado.

www.SkyReport.com - used with permission

[SimpleSimon]

Wild Blue will serve the people without DSL or Cable well. They just need to work on their upload speeds.
Well, that's half the rub (propogation delay being the other half).

Trouble is, upstream has to switch transmitters constantly, while downstream is a continuous flow. It's similar to cable, but that darn 186K MPS spped limit really hurts.

WiFi is a MUCH better answer. If your (rural) area doesn't have it, get with your local dealers and find out why.

[zmark]

WiFi is a MUCH better answer. If your (rural) area doesn't have it, get with your local dealers and find out why
Why is simple: the baby bells. In my case, there is no technical limitation to serving DSL in my rural area; they just have to install a little extra equipment at the local 'office' and turn it on. It's for purely business reasons that they'll never do it.

Now, the moment anyone sets up WiFi or any other broadband access out here, Southern Bell will turn on DSL and crush the competitor. Thus, nobody will ever bother building WiFi out here (or any other competitor to DSL) and we will forever be stuck in POTS/ISDN land.

[logray]

There are now DSL extenders available for people 20km away from the CO. Used in Australia currently with great success since the beginning of the year. For me, I'm 8 miles away from the CO - this would be great technology, but the carriers would have to adopt it, pay for it, drewl on it for a while, etc. By the time they do there will be some new technology out there - like internet over power lines/etc.

Problem with Satellite service is the latency. It's that whole, click and wait for a few seconds thing... that and you can't play games, do any "real" broadband stuff. And unless you are willing to pay $100 a month you can't get service that works with a router, or upload speeds higher than 56kbps.

WiFi is a problem too even in rural areas unless they are very flat and have line of sight to tranceiver towers.

[SimpleSimon]

My local phone company (CenturyTel - THEY SUCK) has just spent a bunch of money upgrading cabinets to aloow for DSL, but refuse to buy the cards for it. You can get DSL if you're close enough to the CO, but not if you're on a remote.

Apparently, some beancounter did some math and figured out they'd lose a lot of second-line revenue because they could be dropped when DSL is used.

That's OK - I'm screwing CenturyTel up down in and out lighting up WiFi customers as fast as I can. By the time they figure it out (which will be when I send them a gloating letter), it'll be too late. ;)