Satellite : "switchover will be done by the start of Q3" March 12 Retailer Chat Recap

**rajuB4U** · #1 03-13-2009

"switchover will be done by the start of Q3" March 12 Retailer Chat Recap
Yesterday Dish Network held a retailer chat. Unfortunately I forgot about it and when I found out it was on the chat was almost over. Because of this I had to wait for a replay to be aired.

So now I am watching the replay and reporting items of interest from this retailer chat.

I apologize for the delay in getting this retailer chat recap up, but the good news is not much of anything to report.

The show opens and they start talking about Team Summit. A bulk of the first half of the show is dedicated to Discussing Team Summit which is Dish Networks big retailer event which will be held this year in Denver.

From there they go and talk about channel launches, and start with HD local cities which have launched in February. Jim says in about 90 days there will be a bunch more HD local launches and a few of them will be simulcast on both Eastern Arc and Western Arc however no list is given.

They then go over the national HD channel launches. Jim says that they are looking at serveral HD expansions over the next few months. Then a slide is shown is the next wave of HD channels coming (all the Viacom channels). Jim says more national HD is coming.

After that they switch to talking about marketing (nothing really exciting here)

They then talk about DSL and Wildblue sales... again nothing important here...

Dish Network will be updating their website for retailers (about damn time!) so that it support IE 7, Firefox, Safari and Netscape. Currently the website only worked correctly with IE 6, so this is a major step forward!

They then talk about dealer fraud.

From there they talk about the Smart Card upgrade going on. Whats interesting is they say they can not send smart cards to PO Boxes. May 1st is the deadline for upgrading commercial accounts. Some services such as adult and premium will be switched over to the new security within the next few weeks. The complete switchover will be done by the start of Q3.

From there they go to commercial sales talk then into questions which then wraps up the show.
c/p Greczkowski