IP Democracy: Murdoch: DirecTV on Cusp of Deploying WiMax

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch let one big cat out of the bag today at Citigroup’s 16th Annual Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference Conference (go here for webcast). DirecTV, News Corp.’s U.S. direct broadcast satellite arm, is gearing up to launch WiMAX service, according to Murdoch, pending last minute tests of the technology.

“We want to make broadband more ubiquitous,” Murdoch said. “You’ll be hearing from us I think in two months on a very clear plan of what will happen. It’s not as expensive as you might think,” adding that DirecTV is sitting on $4 billion in cash and would spend approximately $1 billion on a WiMAX network.

This move makes a lot of sense given that News Corp. in general, and DirecTV in particular, can’t compete in the quadruple play service bundles now dominant in the U.S. multichannel media market without a terrestrial broadband offering. News Corp. has already diversified into the broadband business in the UK as is clearly looking in the U.S. to overcome the limitations of DBS’s one-way technology.

The unexpected revelation by Murdoch no doubt caught DirecTV’s CEO Chase Carey by surprise. Carey will also be speaking at Citgroup’s conference today at 3:40 PT, 6:40 ET. (A webcast of Carey’s presentation can be found here.)

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on January 9, 2006 4:25 PM to IP Democracy