While some industry observers yearn for more facilities-based competition in the essentially duopolistic high-speed market, it surely won’t come from the satellite arena. Hughes Network Systems issued a press release today announcing that its DirecWay satellite-based high-speed service, launched in June 2001, has hit the 250,000-subscriber mark.
So, in four years, DirecWay has been able to garner about 60% of the net new broadband subscribers that top cable operator Comcast generated in Q1 05 alone, when Comcast gained 414,000 new high-speed customers to push its total broadband base to 7.4 million. At this rate, if Comcast’s high-speed subscriber base stays flat, DirecWay will catch up with its terrestrial competitor in slightly more than 118 years.
Cynthia Brumfield at 2:23 PM|Comments(1)
Cynthia,
HNS claimed to reach 100K DirecWay subs by early 2002. After clawing their way up to 160K subs, I believe sometime in 2003, they announced they would no longer actively market the service. As of 4/05, they reported 220k DirecWay subs at the same time as they announced a new ownership structure including 50% private equity. They seem to have adopted a more aggressive strategy now for DirecWay which may derive from their new ownership. This service is of interest in terms of price & performance only to users outside of cable or DSL range; however, when you are on your ranch in Montana, you're happy to get it.
Peter
Posted by: Peter Shapiro at June 2, 2005 4:51 PM
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