Speaking at Citigroup’s Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference, Chase Carey, CEO of DirecTV, shed more light on the company’s WiMax service, first revealed by an earlier presentation at the same conference by Rupert Murdoch, CEO of DirecTV’s parent, News Corp. “It’s always great to follow Rupert,” Carey said, when asked about Murdoch’s bombshell announcement.
At first Carey danced around the question, saying that of course “we have to look at the world where broadband is clearly going to be a primary component…To the degree we can find ways to try to push that forward, we’ll do so. We would be quite happy if those alternatives emerged on their own.”
He did say that Murdoch’s billion-dollar figure was on the “high end,” in terms of how much DirecTV plans to spend on WiMax. Later, he dropped the coy locutions and all but said that DirecTV will invest (his phrasing at times seemed to indicate that the investment had been made) in a third-party who is already eyeing the WiMax market just to get the ball rolling.
“We’re not really thinking about this as a business that we own that we have to invest in,” Carey said. “We’ll have rights to access the product whether through wholesale or through some other form…the build out and the operation of the broadband business is a third-party business.”
The goal is to break the high-speed Internet duopoly of cable-telco broadband. “We’d like to make sure there are entrants in the broadband business beyond cable and the RBOCs,” Carey said.
Cynthia Brumfield at 7:42 PM|
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