Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Dish Network Offers Satellite Broadband television Internet


Satellite TV provider Dish Network has mounted what appears to be a two-pronged effort to bring satellite television to homes via the Internet. The company announced it will offer satellite broadband service aimed at rural users starting Oct. 1, and at the same time, the company is said to be negotiating with content providers and TV networks to offer their channels in their entirety over the Internet.

Dish says it will offer satellite-delivered broadband service priced in two tiers. The first will cost $39.99 per month for 5Mb per second (Mbps) download speed and 1 Mbps upload speed, and a 10GB per month cap on the amount of data you can use. The second tier, for $49.99 per month, offers twice the download speed (10Mbps) and a 20GB data cap. If a customer signs a two-year contract with the company and signs up for one of its more expensive TV plans, Dish will waive a $99 installation fee.

The global average of broadband download speed (according to speedtest.net) is 11.89 Mbps — and the U.S. broadband average speed is now 6.7Mbps, according to Akamai. If Dish can deliver those speeds as advertised, rural customers who currently can only use the Internet via antiquated dial-up service would see significant improvements in their network connectivity. Dish’s pricing is competitive with other satellite Internet companies such as ViaSat, offering its Exede Internet service at similar rates.

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