Satellite : How Satellite Stacks Up

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Scratch the veneer of today’s multiplatform world and you’ll find a satellite.


Carving Up the Multiplatform Pie




More accurately, you’ll find thousands of satellites – around 3,400 by some 2008 counts. Circling the globe, these space-based communicators provide the backbone for virtually all things multiplatform. Television, high-speed internet and voice: The great majority of each of these services traces back, eventually, to those orbiting bits of composites and computer chips.

At the top level of the satellite world are such massive concerns as SES and Intelsat. These giants provide services to broadcasters, cable programmers, telcos and others concerned with shooting bits and bytes around the globe. Below the really big dogs are dozens of other firms ... for example, Hughes, ViaSat, Inmarsat and Globalstar ... which offer broadband, voice and video services to governments and businesses and, of course, consumers.

It’s the consumer level that concerns us here. More specifically, video for consumers. And even more specifically than that, video for consumers in the U.S.

But first, the world:

According to a recent report from Global Industry Analysts, the world direct-to-home satellite TV market is set to pass the $ 50 billion mark in 2009. Much of that $50 billion comes from outside the U.S. There are, after all, 110 DTH pay TV services around the world according to Euroconsult. Only two of them are in the U.S. (Well, three if you count the old C-Band services. But at last count the big dish had only a relative handful video subscribers making it barely a blip in the U.S. market.)


The two big satellite services in the U.S. – DIRECTV and DISH – are considerable businesses. Just 15 years after the very first U.S. digital satellite TV launch (DIRECTV in June of 1994), the DBS duo accounts for more than 34% of the U.S. pay TV market. And one of the two – DIRECTV – has proved remarkably resilient gaining 1.145 million subscribers across the 12 month period ending 2Q09.


So that’s the good news for U.S. satellite providers.