It was said at a DTV conference a couple years ago that “within 3 years there will be no satellite dishes being pointed.” This because of the expected rollout of LEO satellites. However, Hughes Jupiter 3 will go up over the Atlantic next year with capable speed of 500M to the consumer. The Echostar 19 Jupiter 2 we are all on now is capable of 200M, and it is intended that with the additional Jupiter 3 that that speed of 200 will be delivered to Alaska customers – we’ll see on that. Remember that the satellite was supposed to light up all Alaska when envisioned. Viasat 3 will have speed capability of 500M, and will be 3 satellites lighting up the world when completed late 2021. So maybe dish installers will still be needed, who knows?
We need to compliment the Hughes network engineers for their work over the last 3 months. When schools and office personnel went home, the load on E19 doubled and changed from 5- 9 p.m. to 9-5 daytime. It has now doubled again. They were able to adjust pretty well as beam after beam in the lower 48 became saturated. An intended sales promo of 100G for $100 permanent plan for new customers in Alaska was discarded. And all discounts, dealer incentives, rebates and price breaks were taken away. Even in Alaska, where the beams are at less than half capacity, those discounts have disappeared. We are begging to get something back for new customers. We as companies continue to be extremely busy with installs and even repairs. We are hedging a bet that as students return to vastly different school systems, there may be even increased need for internet speeds and capacity come September. Only time will tell on that.
We at Seaport Tel along with our partners believe in transparency and integrity, and as such are dedicated to providing our constituency as best we can with information about developing technologies, new applications and just as much general information about the companies as we can garner. We hope to contribute as much knowledge as we can to our customer base, allowing them to make informed decisions about their needs for future service.
Submitted by Joe Ashcraft, Seaport Telecom