# Orby TV



## cannonz (Oct 23, 2011)

Looked around saw no threads on this, looks like good deal for $40 a month. Any hidden fees etc.? Quality Satellite Television


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## osu1991 (Mar 6, 2015)

If you go over to satelliteguys, there are many that have had it installed and reviewed the equipment.

Orby TV - Support Forum


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## MikeBear (May 21, 2015)

This is mainly targeted at people that want some "cable channels", but either don't have access to high-speed internet for conventional streaming, OR have low internet data caps. Since this is satellite based, it doesn't use your internet connection at all. It's kind of like a month to month no contract cut-rate version of Dish Network.

Of course, you need to *purchase* either their basic receiver, OR their dvr receiver (which costs more). Then there is a one-time $150~ cost for the installation, which INCLUDES an OTA tv antenna (for your local channels), the satellite dish and lnb, and all wiring, etc. A tech comes to your house and installs it for you.

The receiver will integrate any receivable OTA antenna channels into their on screen guide. You only need one dish, even if you buy and have more than one Orby sat receiver. Additional receivers can be run using a simple splitter.


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## Phil T (Oct 29, 2003)

Did the satellite thing for 20 years. Back to cable and TiVo now. My old bones got tired of brushing the snow off the dish every time it snowed here in Colorado.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

According to their website, this service is designed to be cheap and highly affordable. they go on about how they keep their own costs very low so they can pass along relatively low cost to the consumer. this service is never going to be a DirecTV or Dish like service offering hundreds of channels in high-quality with sophisticated whole home DVR systems. also cited on the site, is the lack of any sports channels whatsoever because of the high cost of obtaining rights to those channels and then turning around to the consumer with a higher price then what they can offer today. early reports of the service is that many channels may not be in high definition, If That Matters to some people. Further, Orbi contracts with a third-party to do the installation.

I highly doubt they will even lease any more transponder space than they have today because that would mean more channels bring higher cost and higher costs for leasing more transponders. of course, they're never going to be leaving their current satellite they use for their service today because doing so is going to cost a whole lot of money and having to send someone out to repoint all customers to the new satellite is also very costly and subscribers would have to share that cost, and if they raise rates too high, then the whole point of their existence means that subscribers will just defect.

This is not this is not to say that it is a bad service, indeed, this service may be what some people are looking for. You just have to be aware of what you're going to get for the relatively low price.

IMHO, this service is not going to be successful mostly because of its high upfront cost and its requirement of special equipment that you get stuck with should you cancel the service.

I'm thinking of the consumers who would most likely consider the OrbiTV service. they are or will be using their roku's and fire TVs etc. to access Netflix and Hulu with their very low monthly fees, and whoever else, for the bulk of their watching TV needs, and in addition, possibly subscribe to one of the virtual MVPD's, such as sling TV or DirecTV now, etc., with their relatively low monthly packages fee and their Cloud DVR service. *But you have to consider this:*
the consumer can cancel their subscription to any of those above services at any time, and they can use the very same equipment, the reasonably priced Roku and Fire TVs, etc., to just simply switch to a competitor for the TV services, and later they're free to cancel and switch to, yet, another competitor Etc., and so on and so on.

On the other hand, with Orbi TV you are making a fairly Hefty Financial investment by paying The Upfront cost of equipment (likely including additional rooms) and installation, and should you decide after some time that OrbiTV isn't for you, for some reason, well, Orbi TV equipment receives OrbiTV: it is not the flexible Roku, Fire TV etc. with its a sufficiently low cost that you can put one of those devices every room you have a TV and get a lot more access to a lot more content and competing services, in some cases, even a higher picture quality. And while the Amazon Fire recast TV (with no additional service fees) requires a fair investment for a 2 or 4 tuner model, it has the advantage of leveraging your current Fire TV devices in your home or the apps on your mobile devices, which saves you additional cost to view the OTA content/recordings, and even if you don't have any fire TVs in your home, you can still buy the relatively low priced fire stick TVs to put in just about every room you have a television.

I don't know who these investors are in OrbiTV, but I think they're going to take a big bath. It is my humble opinion that this service is doomed.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Series3Sub said:


> IMHO, this service is not going to be successful mostly because of its high upfront cost and its requirement of special equipment that you get stuck with should you cancel the service.
> 
> I'm thinking of the consumers who would most likely consider the OrbiTV service. they are or will be using their roku's and fire TVs etc. to access Netflix and Hulu with their very low monthly fees, and whoever else, for the bulk of their watching TV needs, and in addition, possibly subscribe to one of the virtual MVPD's, such as sling TV or DirecTV now, etc., with their relatively low monthly packages fee and their Cloud DVR service. *But you have to consider this:*
> the consumer can cancel their subscription to any of those above services at any time, and they can use the very same equipment, the reasonably priced Roku and Fire TVs, etc., to just simply switch to a competitor for the TV services, and later they're free to cancel and switch to, yet, another competitor Etc., and so on and so on.
> ...


I think it's pretty clear that OrbiTV is aimed at rural folks without access to wired broadband, whose only other TV options are DirecTV and DISH, but who don't need sports channels and want to save money on their TV bill. And over the next several years, that rural demographic will become pretty much the only Americans who subscribe to satellite TV from any of those three providers. And I suspect that as the customer base dwindles and the economics change, we may also see DTV and DISH imposing those same sorts of upfront costs for equipment and installation onto the customer too. Satellite (DBS) TV is in an irreversible decline and will probably completely disappear in the late 2020s.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

I see an awful lot of dbs dishes. A lot of apartment complexes and many many two and three family homes in Connecticut. Dish for people who want cheap tv and DirecTV for guys like me who will pay for the best tech possible. I no longer fit that category but I wish I could. Then again ..no tivo so that would stink.


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## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

NashGuy said:


> I think it's pretty clear that OrbiTV is aimed at rural folks without access to wired broadband, whose only other TV options are DirecTV and DISH, but who don't need sports channels and want to save money on their TV bill. And over the next several years, that rural demographic will become pretty much the only Americans who subscribe to satellite TV from any of those three providers. And I suspect that as the customer base dwindles and the economics change, we may also see DTV and DISH imposing those same sorts of upfront costs for equipment and installation onto the customer too. Satellite (DBS) TV is in an irreversible decline and will probably completely disappear in the late 2020s.


Decline? Sure. Disappear? I have doubts about 5G getting to any of these people to make it something that will disappear.


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## skypros (May 19, 2015)

Hummmm..... Programming looks EXPENSIVE to me!! $40 / $50 mo is not going to fly it needs to be 1/2 the cost.
It is a great concept, and I would love to get onboard with the company.... But too expensive, and does not have CNBC  (yet)


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

Did you see the full channel list and not just the "hilites" at the main page?
https://orbytvdev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Orby-TV-Channel-List-1-18-19.pdf

Like its been posted above...it may not be for everyone. But folks who dont want a $100+ bill a month and doesnt have reliable internet its a decent option. If I lived where I use to (rural northern Minnesota) it would be an option I'd look at.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

smark said:


> Decline? Sure. Disappear? I have doubts about 5G getting to any of these people to make it something that will disappear.


Doesn't have to be 5G, could be any form of broadband. (BTW, T-Mobile says that if they're allowed to merge with Sprint, the combined company will reach 96% of rural Americans with 5G by 2024.) It could be low earth orbit satellite broadband; OneWeb just last week launched their first few sats with plans to have service available globally in 2021. SpaceX's Starlink also plans to launch in the early 2020s. Then there's AT&T's AirGig, a sort of "wireless fiber" that runs along power lines, which they believe could be key to cheaply expanding their network into rural areas. None of those are sure bets, of course, but it's hard for me to believe that we won't see Americans without access to broadband dwindle to a very small percentage as we go through the 2020s.

I'm told that DirecTV's current fleet of satellites should be physically operational until 2030 or a bit later (with DISH's current fleet exhausted at some point before then). We won't see any further DBS satellite launches (beyond one slated for this spring by DirecTV, which they've publicly stated will be there last one ever) because it wouldn't make sense economically. So it's possible that DirecTV (or whatever company/brand is running that service in the future) continues offering a deprecated TV service until the last satellite fails but it's also possible that, by the late 2020s as I said, the subscriber base has dwindled enough that the operation can no longer be profitably run.

Anyhoo, whose satellites is Orby using to beam down TV? I'm guessing this is a small operation and they're just using spare capacity on DTV or DISH's birds, kinda like in the cellular world MVNOs like Simple Mobile and Google Fi just operate on the towers/networks of the big 4 (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint).


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## osu1991 (Mar 6, 2015)

NashGuy said:


> Anyhoo, whose satellites is Orby using to beam down TV? I'm guessing this is a small operation and they're just using spare capacity on DTV or DISH's birds, kinda like in the cellular world MVNOs like Simple Mobile and Google Fi just operate on the towers/networks of the big 4 (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint).


2 transponders on 117 W Ku. They are using 8psk hevc for all their channels, so they have plenty of bandwidth. reports are the picture quality is really good.

Eutelsat 117 West A/B at 117.0°W - LyngSat


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

osu1991 said:


> 2 transponders on 117 W Ku. They are using 8psk hevc for all their channels, so they have plenty of bandwidth. reports are the picture quality is really good.
> 
> Eutelsat 117 West A/B at 117.0°W - LyngSat


Ah, cool. So they're riding on a sat that mostly carries Mexican TV networks, it looks like. Makes a lot of sense to use HEVC since they're starting fresh with new STBs. No point in using outdated less efficient H.264.

Given that the sat they're on mainly seems to target Mexico, does its footprint extend across all of the lower 48 states too? Or is Orby only able to offer service to part of the US?

To keep service cost down, it looks like they basically just aren't doing business with any of the companies that own the major broadcast networks, so no Disney (ABC, ESPN, etc.), no NBCUniversal (NBC, NBCSN, USA, etc.), no CBS (CBS, Showtime), and no Fox (Fox, FS1, Fox News, etc.). Essentially what they offer is Philo + Turner networks. A bit odd that they don't offer HBO as an add-on given that they're carrying AT&T's cable channels from Turner.

The idea is that they install an OTA antenna for customers to get the big 4 networks for free, integrated into the Orby STB. But I wonder how many folks CAN get good OTA reception but DON'T have home broadband (and therefore access to lots of streaming cable packages in the $40-50 price range, same as Orby)? Seems like a pretty small niche.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

NashGuy said:


> Given that the sat they're on mainly seems to target Mexico, does its footprint extend across all of the lower 48 states too? Or is Orby only able to offer service to part of the US?


there are different spotbeams and the Ku1 spotbeam covers all the US
https://www.eutelsatamericas.com/en/satellites/americas/EUTELSAT-117WA-downlink-coverage.html



> To keep service cost down, it looks like they basically just aren't doing business with any of the companies that own the major broadcast networks, so no Disney (ABC, ESPN, etc.), no NBCUniversal (NBC, NBCSN, USA, etc.), no CBS (CBS, Showtime), and no Fox (Fox, FS1, Fox News, etc.). Essentially what they offer is Philo + Turner networks. A bit odd that they don't offer HBO as an add-on given that they're carrying AT&T's cable channels from Turner.


rumour is they are talking to FOX. Also this program started over a month ago so give them time. They also mentioned that they dont carry sports networks which keeps down prices.



> The idea is that they install an OTA antenna for customers to get the big 4 networks for free, integrated into the Orby STB. But I wonder how many folks CAN get good OTA reception but DON'T have home broadband (and therefore access to lots of streaming cable packages in the $40-50 price range, same as Orby)? Seems like a pretty small niche.


There are areas in cities that have crap for "broadband". My old house in the SW suburbs of Minneapolis could only get 1.5MB DSL....and last I checked (which was a month or so ago) that address can STILL only get 1.5MB...just checked and yup "*Speeds up to 1.5 Mbps are available in your area!"*
woooo hooo. $45 for 1.5MB DSL 
If you get the DVR model that integrates both OTA & satellite in one and can record both. Dont know if you can record OTA & sate at same time like you can on say a Dish 211k


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

No sports is a tough pill to swallow. March Madness, baseball gearing up. Have to break out the am radio!!


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

unclehonkey said:


> There are areas in cities that have crap for "broadband". My old house in the SW suburbs of Minneapolis could only get 1.5MB DSL....and last I checked (which was a month or so ago) that address can STILL only get 1.5MB...just checked and yup "*Speeds up to 1.5 Mbps are available in your area!"*
> woooo hooo. $45 for 1.5MB DSL


Cable broadband from Comcast, Mediacom, etc. isn't available at your old house in suburban Minnesota? That seems really strange. If the *only* choice in a metro neighborhood for wired internet service is slow DSL, it should be a no-brainer for the local cable company to extend their network there. I've personally never known anyone from a suburban neighborhood anywhere who doesn't have wired broadband and TV service available at their home.


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## Michael Miranda (Jan 21, 2019)

Keep in mind they aren't carrying local stations just the cable channels. I found that I wasn't watching many of the cable channels and instead exploring things like "Me-TV", "Antenna TV ", "Decades", "Movies!" etc. That's where the TiVo OTA comes in handy, I stack up a bunch of shows to watch so they're ready when I am! I also have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Plex so much more than I can watch. Orby could end up being bought by the two other satellite services. I'm sure they're watching with interest!


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## cannonz (Oct 23, 2011)

Like posters on that forum osu1991 linked I would like to see Fox added. Only one RF input on the receiver so obviously combine antenna just one lead per outlet needed another plus.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Michael Miranda said:


> Keep in mind they aren't carrying local stations just the cable channels. I found that I wasn't watching many of the cable channels and instead exploring things like "Me-TV", "Antenna TV ", "Decades", "Movies!" etc. That's where the TiVo OTA comes in handy, I stack up a bunch of shows to watch so they're ready when I am! I also have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Plex so much more than I can watch. Orby could end up being bought by the two other satellite services. I'm sure they're watching with interest!


If one has the internet bandwidth to support Netflix and Amazon Prime videos, and a device such as Roku or Fire TV to watch them, then it's hard to see the case for Orby. For the same or lower price you can subscribe to a service such as PlayStation Vue and get more channels and cloud DVR without paying for satellite TV hardware or mounting a dish. What happens if the Orby equipment (which you OWN) fails? Can it be repaired or replaced and for what cost? If PS Vue doesn't give you the local coverage you want, and you are in the Amazon ecosystem (Fire TV, etc.) you can use a Fire TV Recast and your PS Vue and local stations will be integrated in one (free) program guide and you have DVR for locals (as well as the PS Vue channels).

The set of circumstances for which Orby is the best solution seem to be a very small niche.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

cannonz said:


> Like posters on that forum osu1991 linked I would like to see Fox added. Only one RF input on the receiver so obviously combine antenna just one lead per outlet needed another plus.


correct. There is a diplexer that is added to combine satellite and OTA into one connection


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

NashGuy said:


> Cable broadband from Comcast, Mediacom, etc. isn't available at your old house in suburban Minnesota?


at the time nope. Comcast for some reason had dug up the lines so there was no cable coming to the townhouses. I remember calling them to ask about it and when they came out they told me they would have to run a new line and I'd have to pay for it. Told them to shove it and got DSL which at the time (2004) 1.5MB was fine for web surfing 
When I moved out in 2012 they finally started running the lines to the townhouses (the neighbor did pay for them to run a line to his house a year earlier which they just ghetto rigged and hadnt buried it when I left)

Centurylink is running fibre to that part of town. My mom's house, which is 3-4 blocks from where I lived, can get 1GB internet if she wanted to.


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## cannonz (Oct 23, 2011)

I didn't notice Velocity had changed names till seeing this channel list.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Orby is asking $40 a month minimum and does NOT include national networks (NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX). Dish basic plan is $40 (just went up) and INCLUDES locals and some sports channels like ESPN. Not sure how this pricing is going to get them customers.


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## osu1991 (Mar 6, 2015)

jcthorne said:


> Orby is asking $40 a month minimum and does NOT include national networks (NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX). Dish basic plan is $40 (just went up) and INCLUDES locals and some sports channels like ESPN. Not sure how this pricing is going to get them customers.


Which plan is that? AT120 is $70 a month. The Welcome Pack and Smart Pack are no longer offered to new customers and they didn't include any sports channels. Flex Pack is $38 and doesn't include any sports.

edit, you still have equipment lease costs with Dish also, so the another $10-15 per month, above the programming price depending on equipment leased


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

osu1991 said:


> Which plan is that? AT120 is $70 a month. The Welcome Pack and Smart Pack are no longer offered to new customers and they didn't include any sports channels. Flex Pack is $38 and doesn't include any sports.
> 
> edit, you still have equipment lease costs with Dish also, so the another $10-15 per month, above the programming price depending on equipment leased


Yeah, I'd say Dish's $38 Flex Pack is fairly comparable to Orby's $40 package. Neither include locals or major sports channels. There's a lot of overlap between the two, although Flex Pack contains USA, Hallmark, and FX while Orby has Nick, Investigation Discovery, and Animal Planet. Dish gives you the option to spend extra for lots of different add-on channel packs, including locals, while Orby's upgrade options are much more limited.

With Dish, you have to lease your receiver/DVR ($5 to 10 per TV, I think) and with Orby you have to buy the hardware up front ($100 for a regular receiver or $200 for a DVR, per TV).

With Dish, you typically have to sign up with a 2-year contract (depending on a credit check), during which time your price is usually frozen. But I think you get free or discounted installation. With Orby, there's no contract and no credit check; service is pre-paid (like Netflix), so you can start and stop it any month, although the price could go up at any point too. You pay $150 for the installation, although that includes an OTA antenna which they install alongside the satellite system. (Again, I wonder how many folks who would consider Orby -- mainly rural dwellers, I'd think -- could pick up much OTA TV?)

Main question I'm not sure about is whether Dish offers the Flex Pack to new subscribers or if it's only something that an existing subscriber can switch to, perhaps after their initial contract is fulfilled. Assuming Flex Pack is available for new Dish subscribers, that makes the potential market for Orby that much smaller. Will be interesting to see if they can survive very long.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Orby is going to fail. This is the worst time to be getting into satellite TV, and they are operating in a niche of a niche of a niche without any brand recognition, and with high upfront costs. The market they are targeting already has DISH, and DISH has a LOT more options to offer at a similar price.



NashGuy said:


> Satellite (DBS) TV is in an irreversible decline and will probably completely disappear in the late 2020s.


We've discussed this before, but I don't think so. Satellite has some advantages for commercial and rural usage, but probably only room for a single satellite provider.


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## Bullduty (Aug 10, 2018)

cannonz said:


> Looked around saw no threads on this, looks like good deal for $40 a month. Any hidden fees etc.? Quality Satellite Television


I have the orbytv service..love it for the cost. Have had directv and dish over the years.
Orby has no hidden charges..I am curious if ever Tivo roamio will pair with it?


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

Bullduty said:


> I have the orbytv service..love it for the cost. Have had directv and dish over the years.
> Orby has no hidden charges..I am curious if ever Tivo roamio will pair with it?


no because its satellite. Tivo works with cable or Over the air (there is one Tivo model that works with Directv)


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## cannonz (Oct 23, 2011)

A year later Orby still there.


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## hahathatsfunny (Jul 29, 2008)

For new satellite subscribers, Dish has a two year AT120 plan locked at $59.99/month. It is $20 more than Orby but likely worth it, but that $20/month more is subjective.

After the two years, the price goes up significantly, but Dish has a Flex Pack. However, Dish has raised the Flex Pack pricing quite a bit. From 2019 it was $38 as mentioned upthread, and now it's $54.99. Who knows if they will even have a Flex Pack two years from now given their history of removing low tier packages and increasing them. That being said, if I was in the situation of going satellite, I'd enjoy it for two years and then figure out pricing increases later...


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## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

hahathatsfunny said:


> For new satellite subscribers, Dish has a two year AT120 plan locked at $59.99/month. It is $20 more than Orby but likely worth it, but that $20/month more is subjective.
> 
> After the two years, the price goes up significantly, but Dish has a Flex Pack. However, Dish has raised the Flex Pack pricing quite a bit. From 2019 it was $38 as mentioned upthread, and now it's $54.99. Who knows if they will even have a Flex Pack two years from now given their history of removing low tier packages and increasing them. That being said, if I was in the situation of going satellite, I'd enjoy it for two years and then figure out pricing increases later...


I think the Dish offer though doesn't include the equipment fees so it starts adding up quickly. Has sports though I believe, just depends on what is important.


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## Mister B (Jan 23, 2011)

I tried Orby TV last year. I am a hobbiest and know how to set up a FTA dish myself and enjoyed being able to choose a larger dish and the best regarded LNB. Some of the top rated channels are HD while many of the others are SD. The picture quality on the HD is similar to those cases where two 720p signals are carried by the same OTA channel. The PQ on the SD channels is similar to the diginet OTA sub-channels. 
I found the Orby two tuner OTA side of the DVR to be less capable in my challenging location. After a couple of months of their satellite service I switched to their unadvertised service of guide and DVR capability for the OTA channels only at $12 per month. I found that the guide is only PSIP data from the TV stations themselves which in my area is less than accurate. I felt that I was paying Orby $12 per month for the right to use equipment that I had paid for outright and using guide data that is furnished free from my local stations. That is when I just turned it off and bought a used Tivo white Bolt with lifetime off of eBay. 
I actually hope Orby makes a success of it just to give the other two satellite companies some competition. It would be a good service for someone with a smaller TV and who simply want a few channels but are not very particular which.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

hahathatsfunny said:


> For new satellite subscribers, Dish has a two year AT120 plan locked at $59.99/month. It is $20 more than Orby but likely worth it, but that $20/month more is subjective.
> 
> After the two years, the price goes up significantly, but Dish has a Flex Pack. However, Dish has raised the Flex Pack pricing quite a bit. From 2019 it was $38 as mentioned upthread, and now it's $54.99. Who knows if they will even have a Flex Pack two years from now given their history of removing low tier packages and increasing them. That being said, if I was in the situation of going satellite, I'd enjoy it for two years and then figure out pricing increases later...


More like the channels (media companies) raise the rates they charge Dish, don't want to be in Flex Pack anymore with its reduced pricing, or raises the price for Dish to keep that channel in the Flex pack. The problem or fault is NOT any of the MVPD's (yes, they really would like to lower prices for subscribers because the current high prices are driving subscribers away), rather the problem is the media companies who own the channels who have ANNUAL rate increses built-in to mult-year contracts and keep raising and raising rates each and every year, and then you get to a point where TV with MVPD's becomes too expensive to most people.

The sad part is that this very same process of slow but steady price increases for media company's channels is occurring for the vMVPD's, and the last report was that all vMVPD's LOST subscribers for the first time ever. The separate streaming services of On Demand providers like Netflix, Disney+, et al. is also headed for larger price increases and trade-up for even more content or channels within some services is becoming the A la Carte model which is the most expensive and least value type of service. Once streaming services increase prices to a sustainable level, it will be too expensive to have more than TWO streaming services, or even ONE is all most people can afford or are willing to pay. The same monster is growing bigger and badder for vMVPD's and streaming services.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

Mister B said:


> I tried Orby TV last year. I am a hobbiest and know how to set up a FTA dish myself and enjoyed being able to choose a larger dish and the best regarded LNB. Some of the top rated channels are HD while many of the others are SD. The picture quality on the HD is similar to those cases where two 720p signals are carried by the same OTA channel. The PQ on the SD channels is similar to the diginet OTA sub-channels.
> I found the Orby two tuner OTA side of the DVR to be less capable in my challenging location. After a couple of months of their satellite service I switched to their unadvertised service of guide and DVR capability for the OTA channels only at $12 per month. I found that the guide is only PSIP data from the TV stations themselves which in my area is less than accurate. I felt that I was paying Orby $12 per month for the right to use equipment that I had paid for outright and using guide data that is furnished free from my local stations. That is when I just turned it off and bought a used Tivo white Bolt with lifetime off of eBay.
> I actually hope Orby makes a success of it just to give the other two satellite companies some competition. It would be a good service for someone with a smaller TV and who simply want a few channels but are not very particular which.


Orby is no competition for the other satellite providers. Orby is designed to be as low cost as possible, and this means poor PQ, a MINIMUM of channels and certainly no cutting edge whole home equipment like the 5 tuner Genie (I know, junk, but you know what I mean) or the 16 tuner, any 4 channels on one TV screen Bar Mode very capable Dish Hopper 3. That is the Orby business model: to not become so big and expensive as DirecTV or Dish. The competition for DirecTV and Dish are the vMVPD's (who all lost subscribers for the first time last quarter) and the Streaming Services like Netflix, etc.

The real problem is that Orby had not been selling well at all. I don't know the latest numbers of sales, but, remember, Orby is very expensive to set-up because the consumer has to pay for all the satellite equipment up-front and Orby, at least it used to, requires that the system be installed "by Orby" that the consumer must pay for. This is a business to fail. I can't see Orby far into 2021. It may even fold before 2021.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Series3Sub said:


> The sad part is that this very same process of slow but steady price increases for media company's channels is occurring for the vMVPD's, and the last report was that all vMVPD's LOST subscribers for the first time ever. ... The same monster is growing bigger and badder for vMVPD's and streaming services.


It's a tragedy of the commons. The channels are all incentivized to extract as much as they can out of the MVPD's, even though in the end they are killing their own business. The whole pay TV bundle is too bloated. Cable should have targeted the $30-$40/mo price point for a regular tier of channels, but instead they're at $70/mo+ with all sorts of other fees tacked on. As a result, the whole industry will fall apart. And good riddance to them. They have been sharply declining the quality of content that they're offering and raising prices for well over a decade. The new world is harder to navigate, but the quality content as well as the quality of the UX and VQ are all so much better.



Series3Sub said:


> The real problem is that Orby had not been selling well at all. I don't know the latest numbers of sales, but, remember, Orby is very expensive to set-up because the consumer has to pay for all the satellite equipment up-front and Orby, at least it used to, requires that the system be installed "by Orby" that the consumer must pay for. This is a business to fail. I can't see Orby far into 2021. It may even fold before 2021.


I'd agree. I don't know what market they were trying to target. They're in a niche of a niche of a niche. They're like a crappy version of DISH, and DISH already does DISH's thing well (at least outside of the greater NYC/CT area where they clearly don't want to be based on missing sports channels).


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## hahathatsfunny (Jul 29, 2008)

Orby's attraction likely is higher in areas with households without access to high speed internet, and households wanting lower price than Dish and ability to be non-committal for at least two years.

If one has high speed internet, one can go streaming and get Philo, or YouTube TV as alternatives to Dish, DirecTV and high priced cable. Orby has the Philo channels plus the Warner channels and CSPAN/CSPAN2 though. Orby's lineup before premiums is not bad, kind of like combining Philo with AT&T Watch TV, but add a DVR to the AT&T Watch TV side.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

hahathatsfunny said:


> Orby's attraction likely is higher in areas with households without access to high speed internet, and households wanting lower price than Dish and ability to be non-committal for at least two years.


A niche of a niche of a niche does not a profitable service make.


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## tommiet (Oct 28, 2005)

smark said:


> I think the Dish offer though doesn't include the equipment fees so it starts adding up quickly. Has sports though I believe, just depends on what is important.


Smark is correct.. I dumped Dish after 11 years as the cost of a DVR and fees was getting close to $50.00 a month. Even if you BUY your own equipment, they still charge you all the fees. And I don't miss the rain fade issues with satellite TV.

Please no rocks... I do believe Dish makes a better _quality _dvr than TiVo.

Be Safe


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

Bigg said:


> It's a tragedy of the commons. The channels are all incentivized to extract as much as they can out of the MVPD's, even though in the end they are killing their own business. The whole pay TV bundle is too bloated. Cable should have targeted the $30-$40/mo price point for a regular tier of channels, but instead they're at $70/mo+ with all sorts of other fees tacked on. As a result, the whole industry will fall apart. And good riddance to them. They have been sharply declining the quality of content that they're offering and raising prices for well over a decade. The new world is harder to navigate, but the quality content as well as the quality of the UX and VQ are all so much better.
> 
> I'd agree. I don't know what market they were trying to target. They're in a niche of a niche of a niche. They're like a crappy version of DISH, and DISH already does DISH's thing well (at least outside of the greater NYC/CT area where they clearly don't want to be based on missing sports channels).


They were trying to market to those who want lower priced linier TV service. What is ironic is that Orby is giving those people who subscribe to it what it wanted: a low priced linier TV service with key channels, but thsoe same subscribers complain about NOT getting certain (expensive) channels and wanting MORE channels, which would lead to HIGHER PRICES for the consumer. And Orbi leases transponders on anohter company's satellite, so not only would the cost go up for Orbi as far as new programming/channels, but likely costs to lease more transponders, if they are available at the sat whree they lease current xpdrs, and at what higher price the sat company wants to extract. Is not the LOWER prices the reason people subscribe to Orbi?

Remember CableVision's foray into satellite, destined to fail coming late to the MVPD/Sat party and requireing the consumer pay FULL retail cost for all the costly satellite earth station and STB equipment. With Orbi you get to pay all the costs of equipment and installation. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING! I believe Orbi is Ku FSS, but I'm not certain. Orbi seems to be filled with hobbiests as subscribers, and that will not lead to success for Orbi.

Contrary to what people say about Orby targeting rural areas, I find this is NOT the case for two reasons:
1. Orbi needs critical mass for this business to succeed, and there aint enough folks in our now more urban/suburban nation than ever before. BTW, both DirecTV and Dish did everything they could to get orbital slots that had a CONUS footprint because getting urban and suburban subcribers was the only way they could make money, not getting all the little itty bitty numbers of subscribers in rural areas nationwide. The FCC had set-up DBS slot per region simuating the MSO's, but that made no economic sense to build and then run a DBS business that could not only survive, but compete with Cable.

2. Orbi is actively marketing with TV commericials in LARGE urban markets like Los Angeles since it began operations, and in the ads Orbi compares it self to CABLE TV--NOT satellite as in rural areas. The commercial also shows a very upscal major city-like suburban home etc. clearly aimed at "city folk." Orbi is after people in the big cites metro areas and they NEED those subscribers to have a chance at surviving.

But I suspect they will go out of business some time next year. Their service is just not most people want, and having ONLY rural customers is NOT enough for Orbi to survive.


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## hahathatsfunny (Jul 29, 2008)

Bigg said:


> A niche of a niche of a niche does not a profitable service make.


I agree that it's pretty niche.



Series3Sub said:


> Contrary to what people say about Orby targeting rural areas, I find this is NOT the case for two reasons:


From this article though,

https://www.multichannel.com/news/orby-launches-new

_Further, Orby TV believes there is a core of rural consumers, for whom the broadband capabilities necessary to stream video are unavailable. _

So, they are targeting cord-cutters and those wanting low price , but implicit is that those without high speed internet (typically rural areas or isolated homes), lack the streaming options alternatives to Dish and cable.

What is a little bizarre for a provider that markets "Affordable Satellite TV" is how Orby is pricing the premiums. 4 channels of HBO for $18/month, 4 of Cinemax for $12/month, no Showtime, 4 channels of Starz for $9/month. Epix is fine as in line with what other channels offer (4 channels for $6/month, although on Sling it's $5/month), but the other three premiums seem overpriced.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Series3Sub said:


> They were trying to market to those who want lower priced linier TV service. What is ironic is that Orby is giving those people who subscribe to it what it wanted: a low priced linier TV service with key channels, but thsoe same subscribers complain about NOT getting certain (expensive) channels and wanting MORE channels, which would lead to HIGHER PRICES for the consumer. And Orbi leases transponders on anohter company's satellite, so not only would the cost go up for Orbi as far as new programming/channels, but likely costs to lease more transponders, if they are available at the sat whree they lease current xpdrs, and at what higher price the sat company wants to extract. Is not the LOWER prices the reason people subscribe to Orbi?


This is somewhat uniquely an Orby problem due to limited TP space, but it's really a problem for all MVPDs. The whole system is based on everyone paying for far more channels then they ever watch, and that doesn't work well when 80%+ of the channels basically have one or two shows with a small but highly vocal audience who will yell and scream and throw a fit if "their" channel is dropped. As a result, MVPDs can't trim the fat from the tonnage wars of 10 or 20 years ago, with all these near-useless channels of junk collecting their carriage fees off of these bloated packages. If MVPDs could trim the fat, most of the small channels would go out of business, leaving a handful of bigger channels, although those pose their own issues with channels like ESPN demanding higher than inflation increases in carriage costs year after year after year (usually in multi-year contracts).



> Contrary to what people say about Orby targeting rural areas, I find this is NOT the case for two reasons:
> 1. Orbi needs critical mass for this business to succeed, and there aint enough folks in our now more urban/suburban nation than ever before. BTW, both DirecTV and Dish did everything they could to get orbital slots that had a CONUS footprint because getting urban and suburban subcribers was the only way they could make money, not getting all the little itty bitty numbers of subscribers in rural areas nationwide. The FCC had set-up DBS slot per region simuating the MSO's, but that made no economic sense to build and then run a DBS business that could not only survive, but compete with Cable.
> 
> 2. Orbi is actively marketing with TV commericials in LARGE urban markets like Los Angeles since it began operations, and in the ads Orbi compares it self to CABLE TV--NOT satellite as in rural areas. The commercial also shows a very upscal major city-like suburban home etc. clearly aimed at "city folk." Orbi is after people in the big cites metro areas and they NEED those subscribers to have a chance at surviving.
> ...


There's no way that they can just target rural areas. Rural areas are heavily DISH, with some DirecTV, and those users want more channels and DVRs and such to make up for not having good internet access. There's no way DBS can compete at the low end in suburban/urban markets. YouTube TV and other vMVPDs are barely making a profit, if they are at all, and they have zero up front hardware cost for either the user or the provider, as they run on existing streaming boxes. The only markets left are the high end residential, commercial/hospitality, and rural markets, the first two of which DirecTV dominates, and the latter which DISH is strong in.

What do you mean by DBS slots per region? Are you referring to spot beams or something? Those are used by D* and E* for LiLs.

There's no way they can get a mass of those urban/suburban subscribers. Those are the subscribers who are dropping DBS at the rate of 1M subs/year, and back-filling the cord cutting losses on cable. vMVPDs aren't doing very well, and many people are cutting the cord altogether.



hahathatsfunny said:


> _Further, Orby TV believes there is a core of rural consumers, for whom the broadband capabilities necessary to stream video are unavailable._
> 
> So, they are targeting cord-cutters and those wanting low price , but implicit is that those without high speed internet (typically rural areas or isolated homes), lack the streaming options alternatives to Dish and cable.


I think they're trying to target everyone they can, but the whole thing makes no sense because they're trying to be DISH, but they're not nearly as good at being DISH as DISH is.


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## hahathatsfunny (Jul 29, 2008)

I consider Orby's relevance like small potatoes.

What I wonder is Dish's strategy for its satellite service, and its strategy with Sling, which it owns. It is rumored Dish at some point will want to acquire DirecTV but I don't see the benefit, if it will just make Dish more expensive in the end. Let DirecTV fail on its own, rather than Dish deal with acquisition costs and having to pass them on to the subscribers, which will just result in more losses.

Dish wants to be premium in the tv selection space. Probably the best selection of channels, and great for DVR users.

While Sling was designed to be for cord-cutters and the two paths don't overlap. But over time, Sling is left feeling inferior and cheap quality and not improved to the likes of competing OTT providers. In channel selection, DVR abilities, etc. For example, Sling strikes a deal with Discovery but randomly lacks Animal Planet. With Viacom, Nickelodeon is missing. It has NBC and Fox, but only in select markets. 2 of the 4 major networks only in some markets.

And with cloud DVR, one has to pay $5 extra and the limit is a paltry 50 hours of cloud DVR. On screen guide is among the worst, and defaults to All Channels, partially defeating the purpose of Favorite channels.

Sling has increased in price because of programming costs, and is less "cord-cutter" and more cable replacement, competing partially with YouTube, fubo and Hulu Live. It went up $25 to $30, and it added FOX News, the leading cable network. But for the first time early in the year, Sling lost subscribers in the process even after adding that channel.

That being said, it seems Dish and Sling know they get a lot of subscribers with international programming and a-la-carte.

In that sense, I'd rather see Sling drop the ESPN/Disney suite of channels, and possibly Viacom and Fox, to help control costs. Maybe just keep NBC/Universal and Warner Media while also keeping all the smaller owned cable networks and adding more channels from them. Re-bundle a number or most of the existing channels in Total TV Deal in a $30/month package, and up the DVR to 100 hours, and add $10 extra package with 500 or unlimited cloud DVR hours. It'd also help differentiate Sling from Dish and Sling from its OTT competitors (YTTV, Hulu Live, etc.)


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

hahathatsfunny said:


> What I wonder is Dish's strategy for its satellite service, and its strategy with Sling, which it owns. It is rumored Dish at some point will want to acquire DirecTV but I don't see the benefit, if it will just make Dish more expensive in the end. Let DirecTV fail on its own, rather than Dish deal with acquisition costs and having to pass them on to the subscribers, which will just result in more losses.
> 
> Dish wants to be premium in the tv selection space. Probably the best selection of channels, and great for DVR users.


Interesting take. DISH has one of the best DVRs out on the market today (so I've heard), and a halfway decent price point, but they don't have the same content that DirecTV does. DISH is strong in rural areas, DirecTV is bigger in suburban and commercial settings.


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## ElT60 (May 27, 2020)

hahathatsfunny said:


> What I wonder is Dish's strategy for its satellite service, and its strategy with Sling, which it owns. It is rumored Dish at some point will want to acquire DirecTV but I don't see the benefit, if it will just make Dish more expensive in the end. Let DirecTV fail on its own, rather than Dish deal with acquisition costs and having to pass them on to the subscribers, which will just result in more losses.


 It doesn't necessarily make Dish more expensive. It depends upon what AT&T agrees to sell at (certainly not anywhere close to what they paid for DirecTV. that was way too much). Broadly it makes sense the same way Sirius merging with XM. It makes more sense to have more customers on each relatively extremely expensive satellite. ( a couple of $100M a piece. ). Operating a robust Satellite Fleet will cost in the range of about $1B ( equipment, launch , operators , insurance , etc.). Need to a have a large enough customer base to spread the costs over. Smaller the base the higher the risk that enough will leave for cheaper options because costs are higher.

Satellite TV installs/maintenance etc could be merged which probably would lower operating costs also ( with fewer overlapping field folks deployed. )

Largely the same issue on the leased content to broadcast side. Not enough subscribers then no leverage with context providers and higher costs (e.g., Playstation Vue disappearing). The smaller streaming players have been getting by on the "first crack rock is free" by some of the context providers. The only players at the low cost will be those skipping major expensive blocks of content ( locals , sports , and too full of themselves "news" channels. Include all three of those and your costs are going up over the next 1-2 years almost guaranteed. )

Dish has bigger issues though. Dish not worried about funding for Boost, 5G network
Dish is also trying to become a stable 4th largest mobile network also. That's where it gets wishy washy as to how they do the DirecTV deal. They have at least a high single digit billion build out to do there also. But similar to how Dish got Boost. T-mobile had pragmatically nobody else to sell chunks of Sprint ( which had more than a few "lower cost service" brands) off to complete their merge. The rumblings are along the same lines. Who else would buy DirecTV off AT&T? If it is nobody then Dish can lower the price paid to about the levels that DirecTV can pay for itself ( as oppose to paying a future growth earnings paid upfront price. ... which AT&T grossly screwed up on twofold; in initial payment for DTV and killing off the growth with slimy sales and bad decisions. )



> Dish wants to be premium in the tv selection space. Probably the best selection of channels, and great for DVR users.


 Not on premium. Breath perhaps but "highest cost" channels. Pretty good chance they don't buy DirecTV until after the NFL Sunday Ticket contract lapses and probably won't bid for it. ( at least as a "pay extra for exclusivity" mechanism. That isn't worth it. )



> Sling has increased in price because of programming costs, and is less "cord-cutter" and more cable replacement, competing partially with YouTube, fubo and Hulu Live. It went up $25 to $30, and it added FOX News, the leading cable network. But for the first time early in the year, Sling lost subscribers in the process even after adding that channel.


 Since many folks with Sling had to have a OTA solution for local channels, it was much easier for them to just pause or chuck the Sing part and go to the free over the air that they already had equipment for. Even more so for folks who primarily just bought Sling for live sports. No live sports ... dump the bill.

Youtube is adding a bunch of Viacom stuff over next couple of months. If they don't offset dropping some regional sports channels with the new channels , their costs are probably going up also. The costs going up is substantively not the service providers; it is the content owners. Service providers contribute too, but "cutting the cable" isn't going to do much if still buying relatively large programming bundles from the content providers.



> In that sense, I'd rather see Sling drop the ESPN/Disney suite of channels, and possibly Viacom and Fox, to help control costs. Maybe just keep NBC/Universal and Warner Media while also keeping all the smaller owned cable networks and adding more channels from them.


 Perhaps could have something past "Blue" and "Orange" grouping. Something that tracks package that Philo is doing. But the overall problem is that Disney (ESPN) , Comcast ( NBC/Universal) , and AT&T ( Warner Media) all have their own streaming outlet too. The are even more inclined to lock up their content into bigger bundles. What Dish/Sling need is a bigger block of customers which is what DirecTV would provide ( if AT&T doesn't shrink it too far in the mean time. ). Even if Dish , Sling , and DirecTV all shrink by 10-15% if combine all into a single pool it is still bigger than what Dish started out as. The critical part would be to stop the bleed after had a big enough foundation to work with.



> Re-bundle a number or most of the existing channels in Total TV Deal in a $30/month package, and up the DVR to 100 hours, and add $10 extra package with 500 or unlimited cloud DVR hours. It'd also help differentiate Sling from Dish and Sling from its OTT competitors (YTTV, Hulu Live, etc.)


 Google/Youtube and Disney (Hulu) own their service backends. I'm not sure what Dish/Sling is doing. Sling is about the slowest in changing channels. Their video picture quality is trailing. The low DVR capacity is just somewhat indicative of behind the curve on the backend that the other two aspects are.

Orby's costs are low in part because they don't even have their own satellite. They "rent" space on some "spare" transponders on a EUSTAT. I suppose if DirecTV went completely 'dark' there would be alot more 'empty' transponders looking for renters.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

ElT60 said:


> Dish is also trying to become a stable 4th largest mobile network also. That's where it gets wishy washy as to how they do the DirecTV deal. They have at least a high single digit billion build out to do there also. But similar to how Dish got Boost. T-mobile had pragmatically nobody else to sell chunks of Sprint ( which had more than a few "lower cost service" brands) off to complete their merge. The rumblings are along the same lines. Who else would buy DirecTV off AT&T? If it is nobody then Dish can lower the price paid to about the levels that DirecTV can pay for itself ( as oppose to paying a future growth earnings paid upfront price. ... which AT&T grossly screwed up on twofold; in initial payment for DTV and killing off the growth with slimy sales and bad decisions. )


At this point, I don't really think anyone would want to buy either DirecTV or DISH. They're both businesses/technologies that have passed their peak and are in inexorable decline. The only kind of deal that makes sense to me would be for both parent companies to spin off their satellite TV businesses into a joint venture holding company that would operate both DirecTV and DISH, probably standardizing on a single brand name and, for new subscribers going forward, a single set of hardware and channel line-ups. (For instance, maybe they use the DirecTV brand and its channel packages but DVRs with the Hopper UI and feature set. Install all new rooftop dishes to point toward the DirecTV sat fleet, which has more years of life left in it than the DISH fleet. Meanwhile, existing subs could remain on their current packages and continue using their current hardware, because they'd definitely want to avoid the expense of re-installations and hardware swap-outs if possible.)

The main benefit, of course, for both businesses would be in eliminating their only major direct competitor. But there would also be benefits in terms of cost reductions, increased scale, etc. It wouldn't keep the overall numbers of satellite TV subscribers from continuing to decline but it could make the business more profitable as it slowly dies out over the course of this decade.


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## hahathatsfunny (Jul 29, 2008)

Upon closer look at a couple of Orby Channels, Orby carries Military History and LRW (Lifetime Real Women). Apparently these channels aren't in HD and offer no new content. I was intrigued by what is carried on Military History, but it might just be the Hitler programming that used to air on History. These channels were passed by other carriers, or dropped.

Both are owned by A&E which is half owned by Disney, but ironically Hulu (owned by Disney) felt it wasn't worth it to dedicate space for these channels in its Entertainment Add-On package. Makes me wonder if these niche channels help Orby stand apart and add customers, or really more or less throwaway channels from A&E that nobody wants, now being propped up by Orby coverage.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

hahathatsfunny said:


> Makes me wonder if these niche channels help Orby stand apart and add customers, or really more or less throwaway channels from A&E that nobody wants, now being propped up by Orby coverage.


They're probably the cheapest things out there to increase channel tonnage.



NashGuy said:


> It wouldn't keep the overall numbers of satellite TV subscribers from continuing to decline but it could make the business more profitable as it slowly dies out over the course of this decade.


I don't see why D* at least can't be profitable for a very long time to come with commercial and rural customers, at least if they rationalize their satellite fleet and orbital locations and lose the international programming, which has mostly moved over to streaming.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I don't see why D* at least can't be profitable for a very long time to come with commercial and rural customers, at least if they rationalize their satellite fleet and orbital locations and lose the international programming, which has mostly moved over to streaming.


Oh, well, I wasn't saying that DirecTV or DISH aren't profitable now or would cease to be profitable anytime soon. Just that they would be more profitable if they were combined than if they were separate. And therefore a viable business longer into the future.

I didn't think AT&T would divest DTV for a few more years, until they had gotten a decent number of subs shepherded over to the new AT&T TV and gotten that venture on solid footing. But Wall Street's demands for AT&T to ditch DTV aren't going away.

AT&T under pressure again to sell DirecTV: report

With current AT&T CEO John Stephenson (the original force behind the DTV acquisition) retiring in a couple weeks, I now think the deal will happen sooner rather than later. Although if it depends on cooperation from DISH's Ergen, who knows.

I do wonder what it will mean for AT&T TV if the company divests DTV, given that both services (plus the now-deprecated UVerse TV) ride on the same set of carriage contracts (at least those contracts struck in the past few years). Could mean restructured channel packages and pricing for one or both services. But, honestly, I'm not sure how much AT&T really even cares about AT&T TV or cable TV generally any more. Sounds to me like they're sorta over it and are firmly focused on HBO Max.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

Bigg said:


> This is somewhat uniquely an Orby problem due to limited TP space, but it's really a problem for all MVPDs. The whole system is based on everyone paying for far more channels then they ever watch, and that doesn't work well when 80%+ of the channels basically have one or two shows with a small but highly vocal audience who will yell and scream and throw a fit if "their" channel is dropped. As a result, MVPDs can't trim the fat from the tonnage wars of 10 or 20 years ago, with all these near-useless channels of junk collecting their carriage fees off of these bloated packages. If MVPDs could trim the fat, most of the small channels would go out of business, leaving a handful of bigger channels, although those pose their own issues with channels like ESPN demanding higher than inflation increases in carriage costs year after year after year (usually in multi-year contracts).
> 
> There's no way that they can just target rural areas. Rural areas are heavily DISH, with some DirecTV, and those users want more channels and DVRs and such to make up for not having good internet access. There's no way DBS can compete at the low end in suburban/urban markets. YouTube TV and other vMVPDs are barely making a profit, if they are at all, and they have zero up front hardware cost for either the user or the provider, as they run on existing streaming boxes. The only markets left are the high end residential, commercial/hospitality, and rural markets, the first two of which DirecTV dominates, and the latter which DISH is strong in.
> 
> ...


I dont disagree. However I have been in many urban centers in CT and there are apt buildings with 10-15 satellite dishes all bunched together. A lot of inner city folks use satellite as well. Of course the heartland of America is a big place so those numbers are bigger than what I am seeing In Waterbury, New Haven, Hartford , and Bridgeport.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Oh, well, I wasn't saying that DirecTV or DISH aren't profitable now or would cease to be profitable anytime soon. Just that they would be more profitable if they were combined than if they were separate. And therefore a viable business longer into the future.


Maybe at some point.



> I didn't think AT&T would divest DTV for a few more years, until they had gotten a decent number of subs shepherded over to the new AT&T TV and gotten that venture on solid footing. But Wall Street's demands for AT&T to ditch DTV aren't going away.


AT&T's whole TV/video strategy is a complete mess. They had the size and technology to dominate the space, but instead they have floundered and moved from one failure to another. AT&T TV is only ever going to work at scale in areas where they have AT&T broadband unless they radically change the pricing structure.



> But, honestly, I'm not sure how much AT&T really even cares about AT&T TV or cable TV generally any more. Sounds to me like they're sorta over it and are firmly focused on HBO Max.


So what is AT&T's future? They blew it on TV, can they manage to not blow it with HBO Max? Streaming is a hot market, but there is a ton of competition, and HBO Max isn't that compelling of a service. HBO had a number of great years, but now that a lot of their big shows are gone, where are they headed?



mattyro7878 said:


> I dont disagree. However I have been in many urban centers in CT and there are apt buildings with 10-15 satellite dishes all bunched together. A lot of inner city folks use satellite as well. Of course the heartland of America is a big place so those numbers are bigger than what I am seeing In Waterbury, New Haven, Hartford , and Bridgeport.


Yup, they're all over the place, but if you look a lot of those dishes are old, and the rate of new ones popping up has pretty much gone to zero. Satellite just can't compete in urban areas anymore. There are still a lot of customers on satellite, but as they move around or switch services, they're going to be leaving satellite and either cutting the cord, or going to cable/streaming.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> AT&T's whole TV/video strategy is a complete mess. They had the size and technology to dominate the space, but instead they have floundered and moved from one failure to another. AT&T TV is only ever going to work at scale in areas where they have AT&T broadband unless they radically change the pricing structure.


Yeah, I've thought for awhile now that AT&T TV would mainly be sold in tandem with AT&T broadband, making it more of a replacement for Uverse TV than DTV. They've already, however, basically stopped actively marketing DTV (and if there's no NFL season this year, I see no reason for them to do their traditional DTV fall push based around free NFL Sunday Ticket). They've said they'll really only rely on DTV as an option in areas where decent broadband isn't available, which makes sense. So I guess they think there will be some uptake for AT&T TV by consumers served by broadband providers outside the AT&T footprint. But given the dwindling number of Americans who are even interested in the kind of traditional cable TV-like service that AT&T TV is, I just can't see there being many pairing AT&T TV with, say, Charter broadband. At least, not as AT&T TV is currently priced and structured (with a 2-yr contract). Most of those folks will just use the cable TV service being offered by their broadband provider (e.g. Comcast, Charter, etc.) and score a bundling discount from them.

AT&T's CEO repeatedly said over the past few years that AT&T TV would have thinned-down content packages and, because of that and the lower cost of customer acquisition and CPE, they could price the service lower than they've done with DTV and UVerse TV. But then they came out with a service where the packages and pricing (and 2-yr commitment) are basically the same as DTV. Looks to me like the only source of savings with AT&T TV vs. DTV is from not having to rent boxes for additional TVs. And even that doesn't kick in until the second year if you're buying additional AT&T TV boxes given that they cost $10/mo each for 12 months. (You do have the option of just using the AT&T TV app on your own Roku, Apple TV or Fire TV on your secondary TVs if you wish, though, at no additional cost.)

IDK, I guess AT&T just decided that the traditional cable TV business is in inexorable decline and there's nothing they can really do about it. So no point in giving up extra profit margin on AT&T TV to buoy subscriber numbers. May as well just milk that cash cow until it dies.



Bigg said:


> So what is AT&T's future? They blew it on TV, can they manage to not blow it with HBO Max? Streaming is a hot market, but there is a ton of competition, and HBO Max isn't that compelling of a service. HBO had a number of great years, but now that a lot of their big shows are gone, where are they headed?


Eh, WarnerMedia owns a ton of compelling library content and they've got lots of deals in place with talented creators like J.J. Abrams to create new must-see series. Content is king and I don't see HBO Max having a problem succeeding. Remember, HBO already had about 35 million subs (a few more than Hulu) at a price of $15. All they're doing with HBO Max is greatly expanding the amount of content, and broadening the demographic target set, while keeping the price the same. So uptake can only increase. I doubt they'll ever catch up with Netflix in terms of subscriber count, but they don't need to.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

Bigg said:


> AT&T's whole TV/video strategy is a complete mess. They had the size and technology to dominate the space, but instead they have floundered and moved from one failure to another.


Unless you have been a customer, you don't know the half of it. A couple years ago, my oldest took a job in Boston. While he was looking for a place, he stayed with his grandparents -- who had no internet access. I added a hotspot to our account so he could have high speed internet. It was awful. We ended up upgrading our service so he could use his phone as a hotspot. That tier of service was expensive, but included a lot of perks I did not need -- like free HBO and discounted TV service. I chose DirecTVNow because it was only $5/month after the discount.

Now, they could not let me return the hotspot because we were one day outside the return period -- due to working on the problems with their support people. Instead they sent me Visa gift cards that exceeded the price I paid for the hotspot. They could not add DirecTVNow to my account due to some kind of transition issue. They ended up giving me a two year satellite package with a steep discount the first year and a good discount for the second year. During the second year, they increased my price twice. They refunded the difference. After the second time, I said I thought they violated the terms of our agreement twice and asked them to let me discontinue the service without penalty. No problem.

They are trying to integrate a lot of moving parts and it's not going well.


Bigg said:


> So what is AT&T's future? They blew it on TV, can they manage to not blow it with HBO Max? Streaming is a hot market, but there is a ton of competition, and HBO Max isn't that compelling of a service. HBO had a number of great years, but now that a lot of their big shows are gone, where are they headed?


I don't think AT&T is out of the TV business. End game will be a 5G service that includes voice, internet, and entertainment. Not sure they can do it, but that will simplify their infrastructure and business. When Verizon installed high speed internet at my home fifteen years ago, the tech told me that they were selling off all of their copper/fiber infrastructure and planned to do everything over the air (cell). Still waiting for that.


Bigg said:


> Yup, they're all over the place, but if you look a lot of those dishes are old, and the rate of new ones popping up has pretty much gone to zero. Satellite just can't compete in urban areas anymore. There are still a lot of customers on satellite, but as they move around or switch services, they're going to be leaving satellite and either cutting the cord, or going to cable/streaming.


35 million households still get TV via satellite -- including two of my sisters and me until this year.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> But given the dwindling number of Americans who are even interested in the kind of traditional cable TV-like service that AT&T TV is, I just can't see there being many pairing AT&T TV with, say, Charter broadband. At least, not as AT&T TV is currently priced and structured (with a 2-yr contract).


Very few will. They'll either get TV from their MSO, or they'll get something like YouTube TV that's much cheaper, or they'll cut the cord entirely.



> IDK, I guess AT&T just decided that the traditional cable TV business is in inexorable decline and there's nothing they can really do about it. So no point in giving up extra profit margin on AT&T TV to buoy subscriber numbers. May as well just milk that cash cow until it dies.


I think that they decided they don't want to market it outside of their ILEC footprint (or limited overbuild areas where they have built out fiber to MDUs or whatnot), and they're just going to use it to replace U-Verse TV.



> Content is king and I don't see HBO Max having a problem succeeding. Remember, HBO already had about 35 million subs (a few more than Hulu) at a price of $15.


I guess we'll have to see, but the competition among the streaming services is fierce.



wizwor said:


> Unless you have been a customer, you don't know the half of it.


I've seen it from the wireless side. They have 15 or 20 different sets of packages, the systems are ancient, and if you do one thing to a plan it causes something else to go haywire, so our plan is sort of stuck on what we have, and we don't dare to change anything.



> I don't think AT&T is out of the TV business. End game will be a 5G service that includes voice, internet, and entertainment. Not sure they can do it, but that will simplify their infrastructure and business. When Verizon installed high speed internet at my home fifteen years ago, the tech told me that they were selling off all of their copper/fiber infrastructure and planned to do everything over the air (cell). Still waiting for that.


The problem is, that only works in certain areas with a certain density. And some areas are too dense/tall to make it work. So it might work for 50% of the country. What about the other 50%, where much of the wealthier 'burbs and downtown areas are?



> 35 million households still get TV via satellite -- including two of my sisters and me until this year.


And it's dropping by over 1M subs/year, and is likely to drop even more this year due to COVID.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

wizwor said:


> They are trying to integrate a lot of moving parts and it's not going well.


True.



wizwor said:


> I don't think AT&T is out of the TV business. End game will be a 5G service that includes voice, internet, and entertainment. Not sure they can do it, but that will simplify their infrastructure and business. When Verizon installed high speed internet at my home fifteen years ago, the tech told me that they were selling off all of their copper/fiber infrastructure and planned to do everything over the air (cell). Still waiting for that.


AT&T is not going to abandon their AT&T Fiber infrastructure and go all-5G, although it's reasonable to think we'll see them add to their home broadband footprint beyond the current FTTH network via fixed wireless 5G or AirGig. And their two flagship TV products, HBO Max and AT&T TV, could be served up just as easily over those potential fixed wireless connections as FTTH given that they're both OTT "software-based" (as AT&T likes to describe them) services. Even if AT&T spins off DTV (and therefore the lion's share of their cable TV subs) soon, I see no reason to think that they're going to exit the business of selling cable TV service any time in the foreseeable future. I just think AT&T no longer believes that AT&T TV is going to be some kind of growth business for them. They're pinning their hopes on HBO Max in that regard.

Likewise, I don't see Verizon getting rid of their FTTH network. They'll keep it but all of their future growth in home broadband will come via fixed wireless 5G installations. I do think it's feasible that they _eventually_ shut down FiOS TV though and simply opt to resell OTT cable TV services, as they already do with YouTube TV. In fact, that's the only cable TV service they sell to their 5G Home customers, given that their QAM-based FiOS TV can't be easily provisioned over 5G.



wizwor said:


> 35 million households still get TV via satellite -- including two of my sisters and me until this year.


No, I don't think so. Not in the US, anyway. AT&T reported that their "premium TV" subscriber count fell to 18.6 million at the end of Q1 2020. But that category includes DTV, Uverse TV, and a small number of new AT&T TV subs. (It excludes, however, their AT&T TV Now subs.) They stopped breaking out DTV vs. Uverse TV subs separately a year or so ago but, back then, about 83% of the total number were on DTV, with the rest on Uverse TV. So if we assume that ratio still holds, it would suggest DTV was down to about 15.4 million subs at the end of March. (And that's a generous assumption for DTV. All indications are that DTV is bleeding subs at a far higher rate than Uverse TV. Frankly, that was probably why AT&T stopped reporting those two services separately and instead lumped them into a combined "premium TV" category.)

Meanwhile, DISH was down to just 9 million satellite TV subs at the end of Q1 2020.

Added together, that's only 24.4 million satellite TV subs. Of course, you have to count Orby subscribers too but that company won't release that information. I'd be surprised if they had even 1 million subscribers though.

If DTV and DISH keep losing subs the rest of this year at the same pace they did in Q1, their combined subscriber count would be down to about 21 million at the end of 2020.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> And their two flagship TV products, HBO Max and AT&T TV, could be served up just as easily over those potential fixed wireless connections as FTTH given that they're both OTT "software-based" (as AT&T likes to describe them) services. Even if AT&T spins off DTV (and therefore the lion's share of their cable TV subs) soon, I see no reason to think that they're going to exit the business of selling cable TV service any time in the foreseeable future. I just think AT&T no longer believes that AT&T TV is going to be some kind of growth business for them. They're pinning their hopes on HBO Max in that regard.


What's going to be interesting is seeing how they're going to move the DirecTV customers that they spent so much time and effort moving from U-Verse to DirecTV a few years ago over to AT&T TV instead. They will run into the same bandwidth issue that they were trying to solve with some of the slower VDSL connections, and require yet another set of equipment and disruption to those customers. And doing so will tank DirecTV's value even more, as it will suck those 3-5 million subs back out of the DirecTV system onto AT&T TV, and some of them will just cut the cord or switch to cable instead.



> All indications are that DTV is bleeding subs at a far higher rate than Uverse TV. Frankly, that was probably why AT&T stopped reporting those two services separately and instead lumped them into a combined "premium TV" category.)


The people left on U-Verse are ones who can't or won't convert to DirecTV, and are bundled with internet and often phone. A lot of DirecTV subs are standalone and at much higher risk of leaving.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> What's going to be interesting is seeing how they're going to move the DirecTV customers that they spent so much time and effort moving from U-Verse to DirecTV a few years ago over to AT&T TV instead. They will run into the same bandwidth issue that they were trying to solve with some of the slower VDSL connections, and require yet another set of equipment and disruption to those customers. And doing so will tank DirecTV's value even more, as it will suck those 3-5 million subs back out of the DirecTV system onto AT&T TV, and some of them will just cut the cord or switch to cable instead.


Some of those customers who currently have DTV plus AT&T internet (fiber or some type of DSL) will willingly move over to AT&T TV because they find it to be a more desirable product (no rain fade, whole-home cloud DVR with unlimited simultaneous recordings, next-gen box with apps and Google Assistant, etc.). But a lot of folks just tend to stay with whatever they have. And some folks will certainly still prefer DTV right now because of features it has that AT&T TV doesn't have (yet anyway): PBS stations, 4K HDR sports, NFL Network, NFL Sunday Ticket, the ability to retain recordings longer than 90 days, etc.

But if AT&T wants to get serious about moving those folks over to AT&T TV, then they'll lure them over with financial incentives. Maybe remove the existing bundling discount that those customers get for combining DTV with AT&T home internet service, causing their bill to go up, but at the same time offer them a promo deal to switch to AT&T TV with a new contract -- first year low rate, Visa gift card, ongoing bundling discount that never goes away. As things stand right now, I think there will be some DTV subs who choose to switch over to AT&T TV but it's not going to be a stampede unless AT&T aggressively markets it via financial incentives.

As for AT&T TV bandwidth issues for folks on DSL, I don't think that will be a problem for those on FTTN DSL (what used to be branded Uverse). AT&T TV only needs about 8 Mbps per screen for best-quality HD. And right now, it maxes out at 3 concurrent screens. All of the DVR recording is done in the cloud (unlike Uverse TV). Actually, they specifically state on their product page "AT&T TV requires minimum internet speeds of 8Mbps." I guess if your speed is that slow and you want to watch on multiple screens at the same time, their servers just lower the bitrate/resolution as necessary (just like Netflix would do).

So for those households still on AT&T's slowest DSL tiers, under 8 Mbps, no, they wouldn't try to shift them over from DTV to AT&T TV. But for all their other home internet customers, sure.



Bigg said:


> The people left on U-Verse are ones who can't or won't convert to DirecTV, and are bundled with internet and often phone. A lot of DirecTV subs are standalone and at much higher risk of leaving.


Yep. But people are leaving DTV in droves, and I have to think it's both standalone customers as well as those who get other AT&T services who are cancelling. It'll be interesting to see the value assigned to DTV when it's sold/spun-off. It sure as heck won't be close to what AT&T paid for it a few years ago.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Some of those customers who currently have DTV plus AT&T internet (fiber or some type of DSL) will willingly move over to AT&T TV because they find it to be a more desirable product (no rain fade, whole-home cloud DVR with unlimited simultaneous recordings, next-gen box with apps and Google Assistant, etc.). But a lot of folks just tend to stay with whatever they have. And some folks will certainly still prefer DTV right now because of features it has that AT&T TV doesn't have (yet anyway): PBS stations, 4K HDR sports, NFL Network, NFL Sunday Ticket, the ability to retain recordings longer than 90 days, etc.
> 
> But if AT&T wants to get serious about moving those folks over to AT&T TV, then they'll lure them over with financial incentives. Maybe remove the existing bundling discount that those customers get for combining DTV with AT&T home internet service, causing their bill to go up, but at the same time offer them a promo deal to switch to AT&T TV with a new contract -- first year low rate, Visa gift card, ongoing bundling discount that never goes away. As things stand right now, I think there will be some DTV subs who choose to switch over to AT&T TV but it's not going to be a stampede unless AT&T aggressively markets it via financial incentives.


If they're going to sell or spin off DirecTV, they have to do *something*, otherwise they just lose all those customers. Some will choose to stay on DirecTV for various reasons, but AT&T can't just dump those customers. The problem is, if they pull those customers back to AT&T TV (plus any customers who were on DirecTV prior to AT&T buying them but happen to have AT&T for internet as well), then they devalue DirecTV, as it will have fewer customers left.



> As for AT&T TV bandwidth issues for folks on DSL, I don't think that will be a problem for those on FTTN DSL (what used to be branded Uverse). AT&T TV only needs about 8 Mbps per screen for best-quality HD. And right now, it maxes out at 3 concurrent screens. All of the DVR recording is done in the cloud (unlike Uverse TV). Actually, they specifically state on their product page "AT&T TV requires minimum internet speeds of 8Mbps." I guess if your speed is that slow and you want to watch on multiple screens at the same time, their servers just lower the bitrate/resolution as necessary (just like Netflix would do).
> 
> So for those households still on AT&T's slowest DSL tiers, under 8 Mbps, no, they wouldn't try to shift them over from DTV to AT&T TV. But for all their other home internet customers, sure.


It's a serious problem. If you happen to have a crossbox in your front yard and can get 100mbps, great, but many of the customers are way out on 12mbps or 18mbps connections, and AT&T TV would eat into their bandwidth significantly, and if there's not QoS in the same way that there is for U-Verse's managed IPTV system today, then internet usage could cause AT&T TV to stop working properly or drop down to a lower resolution.

They are also going to have to deal with the 3-stream limit, as U-Verse and DirecTV currently support well more than that. Even if AT&T TV actually needs 3-4mbps for each HD stream with HEVC encoding, put 4 TVs on an 18mbps connection, and you've got a problem. The U-Verse system today limits the number of HD and SD screens, which is a problem, and why DirecTV made sense for those customers.

You've also got FWI customers that can't stream a lot due to bandwidth caps, and limited bandwidth available from the tower. Those pair up really well with DirecTV.



> Yep. But people are leaving DTV in droves, and I have to think it's both standalone customers as well as those who get other AT&T services who are cancelling. It'll be interesting to see the value assigned to DTV when it's sold/spun-off. It sure as heck won't be close to what AT&T paid for it a few years ago.


Yup, that was a lousy move for AT&T. I guess I could see them spinning it off, but it would be a mess, and yet another blunder for them in trying to address the previous blunder.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> If they're going to sell or spin off DirecTV, they have to do *something*, otherwise they just lose all those customers. Some will choose to stay on DirecTV for various reasons, but AT&T can't just dump those customers. The problem is, if they pull those customers back to AT&T TV (plus any customers who were on DirecTV prior to AT&T buying them but happen to have AT&T for internet as well), then they devalue DirecTV, as it will have fewer customers left.


Yeah. Well, a paying TV customer is valuable to AT&T whether they stay on DTV (thereby propping up the value of the venture when they sell it) or move to AT&T TV (providing future cash flows to AT&T). I've always assumed that an existing DTV customer would hold greater long-term value to AT&T if they switched over to AT&T TV. But maybe not. Depends on how the accountants crunch the numbers and valuate the DTV business in the event of a sale.



Bigg said:


> It's a serious problem. If you happen to have a crossbox in your front yard and can get 100mbps, great, but many of the customers are way out on 12mbps or 18mbps connections, and AT&T TV would eat into their bandwidth significantly, and if there's not QoS in the same way that there is for U-Verse's managed IPTV system today, then internet usage could cause AT&T TV to stop working properly or drop down to a lower resolution.
> 
> They are also going to have to deal with the 3-stream limit, as U-Verse and DirecTV currently support well more than that. Even if AT&T TV actually needs 3-4mbps for each HD stream with HEVC encoding, put 4 TVs on an 18mbps connection, and you've got a problem. The U-Verse system today limits the number of HD and SD screens, which is a problem, and why DirecTV made sense for those customers.
> 
> You've also got FWI customers that can't stream a lot due to bandwidth caps, and limited bandwidth available from the tower. Those pair up really well with DirecTV.


It would be interesting to see the breakdown of AT&T's home internet customers by speed tier, i.e. what % of their homes currently served have a download speed under 25 Mbps? When I last had AT&T FTTN (Uverse) internet, the installer did all he could to provision me on the fastest possible connection, which clocked in a little north of 40 Mbps if I remember correctly. I'm about 2,250 ft (or 0.4 mi) away from the lawn fridge up the street. Of course, like a lot of FTTN neighborhoods, AT&T has since completely converted us over to FTTH, i.e. AT&T Fiber, with the only available speed tier for new subs being 1 Gig.

Anyhow, even for most of those homes at the 18 Mbps tier, I don't think switching them to AT&T TV would be a serious problem. The average US household only has 2.6 persons in it. The only thing folks tend to do on broadband that demands much bandwidth is stream video and people only tend to stream/view one thing at a time. Generally speaking, you can do three, maybe four, HD streams (in 720p, anyway) at the same time on an 18 Mbps connection from major services like Netflix, YouTube, etc. That's likely true for AT&T TV too; all these OTT services just automatically ratchet down their bitrates if bandwidth gets tight. AT&T TV is variable bitrate, and uses HEVC, in both ways unlike Uverse TV. So yeah, you might have some instances on slow connections where the HD picture quality on AT&T TV looks more like Comcast than DirecTV. But I don't see that being a deal-breaker. (It hasn't destroyed Comcast's ability to retain millions and millions of paying cable TV customers.)

I think you over-estimate the number of TVs (or other video screens) that the average U.S. household tends to have going at the same time. Again, AT&T TV's 3-stream limit won't be a problem for most people (although I don't see why they won't eventually allow additional in-home streams, perhaps for an upcharge, given that other vMVPDs do).

At any rate, sure, there's certainly some percentage of AT&T home internet customers for whom AT&T TV won't make sense, either because their internet is too slow or because they prefer DTV for various reasons (e.g. ability to watch on more than 3 TVs at once). I don't think AT&T has any expectation that their low-end DSL customers (whom they really don't seem to care about) will switch to AT&T TV. Assuming the company makes a dedicate effort to shift DTV (and Uverse TV) subs over to AT&T TV, it'll mainly be among those who have broadband (i.e. 25 Mbps or greater) service.

Perhaps AT&T will finally come through for their poor DSL customers and upgrade them to some form of next-gen fixed wireless, e.g. 5G-via-AirGig, or longer-range 800 MHz fixed 5G. If they do, AT&T TV will obviously be the cable TV service they'll offer to bundle. (But even if AT&T doesn't come through for those addresses with home broadband, some company eventually will, whether it's the local cable co or T-Mobile or Verizon or Starlink or Amazon.)



Bigg said:


> Yup, that was a lousy move for AT&T. I guess I could see them spinning it off, but it would be a mess, and yet another blunder for them in trying to address the previous blunder.


I don't think spinning off DTV would necessarily be a bad move for AT&T shareholders if it's done right. Devil's in the details, of course. The deal that's been proposed on Wall Street would involve both DTV and DISH spinning off their DBS operations to a private third-party that would combine and operate the two businesses. Hard to know whether that would be a good thing or not for DTV and DISH customers. They'd probably have to agree to some kind of consumer price controls for a few years to get it to pass muster with the feds given that DTV and DISH are each other's only direct competitor.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Yeah. Well, a paying TV customer is valuable to AT&T whether they stay on DTV (thereby propping up the value of the venture when they sell it) or move to AT&T TV (providing future cash flows to AT&T). I've always assumed that an existing DTV customer would hold greater long-term value to AT&T if they switched over to AT&T TV. But maybe not. Depends on how the accountants crunch the numbers and valuate the DTV business in the event of a sale.


That almost sounds like a wholesale exit of the TV business, which would undermine their increased negotiation leverage with programmers, which was supposed to be part of the idea behind the DirecTV acquisition, along with the bandwidth issues on VDSL.



> It would be interesting to see the breakdown of AT&T's home internet customers by speed tier, i.e. what % of their homes currently served have a download speed under 25 Mbps?


It's hard to say. My guess is probably half, but I could be way high, as I'm basing my knowledge on Connecticut, which has a street structure that looks like a spaghetti monster yakked, and is less conducive to FTTN than, say, the inner 'burbs of Chicagoland, or fairly compact small towns and cities with block-grid streets.



> Anyhow, even for most of those homes at the 18 Mbps tier, I don't think switching them to AT&T TV would be a serious problem. ... (It hasn't destroyed Comcast's ability to retain millions and millions of paying cable TV customers.)


I suppose that may be the case, but I still think it would cause some significant issues in a lot of places. Comcast has proven that people are oblivious to what's right in the front of them.



> Again, AT&T TV's 3-stream limit won't be a problem for most people (although I don't see why they won't eventually allow additional in-home streams, perhaps for an upcharge, given that other vMVPDs do).


I don't know if there's a contractual issue, but they should increase it to whatever U-Verse can handle on fiber, 6 or 8 I believe?



> Perhaps AT&T will finally come through for their poor DSL customers and upgrade them to some form of next-gen fixed wireless, e.g. 5G-via-AirGig, or longer-range 800 MHz fixed 5G. If they do, AT&T TV will obviously be the cable TV service they'll offer to bundle. (But even if AT&T doesn't come through for those addresses with home broadband, some company eventually will, whether it's the local cable co or T-Mobile or Verizon or Starlink or Amazon.)


Yeah right. FWI is basically a scam to get government money, and provide a lousy service. If they would just offer the full bandwidth of their LTE network with 5xCA or higher, they could offer those customers 100mbps+ service with reasonable data caps. Verizon and AT&T have both sat on the ability to do rural wireless internet for years, especially AT&T, as their spectrum position is very good.



> I don't think spinning off DTV would necessarily be a bad move for AT&T shareholders if it's done right. Devil's in the details, of course. The deal that's been proposed on Wall Street would involve both DTV and DISH spinning off their DBS operations to a private third-party that would combine and operate the two businesses. Hard to know whether that would be a good thing or not for DTV and DISH customers. They'd probably have to agree to some kind of consumer price controls for a few years to get it to pass muster with the feds given that DTV and DISH are each other's only direct competitor.


It's almost impossible to say how the feds would react these days, as it's been surprise after surprise in that department. It would be terrible for rural customers that are reliant on satellite, as the combined company would have zero competition. I hope it would be fought hard against. Today's model is at least a duopoly.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

Do these DSL people simply not stream?? I mean even if I had the biggest channel package around, I would still want to do some 4k streaming. Pretty much impossible with DSL, right?


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## ncbill (Sep 1, 2007)

DSL here topped out at 6 MBps down (instead of the max 12 MBps)...from what I read online that was typical for many markets.

I had it for years, but eventually switched to cable broadband for (back at the time) 3x more speed at 1/2 the price.

And nearly 3 years ago AT&T's contractor installed underground conduit & then pulled fiber on the main street just outside our development.

But AT&T hasn't yet bothered to extend to our neighborhood even though our HOA literally sold BellSouth a right-of-way pre-merger.

Guess they don't think they'll have enough takers to make it worth their while.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> It's hard to say. My guess is probably half, but I could be way high, as I'm basing my knowledge on Connecticut, which has a street structure that looks like a spaghetti monster yakked, and is less conducive to FTTN than, say, the inner 'burbs of Chicagoland, or fairly compact small towns and cities with block-grid streets.


I think you're way off in thinking that half of AT&T's home internet customers have sub-25 Mbps download speeds. Connecticut is not like most of AT&T's footprint, which is mainly the South, Midwest and California. At this point, AT&T has either upgraded their customers to broadband speeds via FTTN or FTTH, or customers have just left AT&T DSL for cable broadband. Pretty much the only folks still sticking with AT&T DSL on a sub-25 Mbps tier are folks who just have no better choice, i.e. those homes not passed by cable. I don't even know where such homes exist in this part of the country. Maybe rural areas? But did AT&T ever offer DSL service out to farms and rural towns in the first place? Down here, those areas seem to typically have their own local telco rather than AT&T.

Anyhow, as AT&T has made clear, they will continue to market DTV to "rural" areas, which they appear to mean areas that don't have broadband available. As for the original question, I don't know what is the cut-off speed that AT&T considers "fast enough" on their own DSL network to transition an existing customer from a bundle of DTV+DSL to AT&T TV+DSL. But again, if you look at their own product page for AT&T TV, it says in normal-sized text, "AT&T TV requires minimum internet speeds of 8Mbps." And then there's a link just beneath there to test your speed.



Bigg said:


> I don't know if there's a contractual issue, but they should increase it to whatever U-Verse can handle on fiber, 6 or 8 I believe?


Don't see why they couldn't do what Hulu with Live TV does, which is charge extra for an "Unlimited Screens Add-on". Per their support site:

_As a Live TV subscriber, you'll be able to stream from two screens at the same time . However, if you have a big family with different TV tastes, the Unlimited Screens Add-on may be the perfect fit for you.

Add Unlimited Screens to your live TV subscription for an additional $9.99/month and you'll be able to stream on any number of supported devices that are connected to your Home Network at the same time. Plus, while you're on the go you can also stream from up to three separate mobile devices._​


Bigg said:


> Yeah right. FWI is basically a scam to get government money, and provide a lousy service. If they would just offer the full bandwidth of their LTE network with 5xCA or higher, they could offer those customers 100mbps+ service with reasonable data caps. Verizon and AT&T have both sat on the ability to do rural wireless internet for years, especially AT&T, as their spectrum position is very good.


I think T-Mobile is going to make a serious play for fixed wireless home broadband using a variety of 5G and 4G spectrum. (In fact, they've committed to doing so as one of the conditions of the Sprint merger.) They're already doing it a bit on long-range 600 MHz. The new 2.5 GHz spectrum from Sprint will be very important to their 5G network in metro areas and I'm pretty sure they've indicated that it will be used for home broadband too.

So far, Verizon is just cherry picking addresses to offer millimeter wave home 5G. Will be interesting to see what AT&T ends up doing.



Bigg said:


> It's almost impossible to say how the feds would react these days, as it's been surprise after surprise in that department. It would be terrible for rural customers that are reliant on satellite, as the combined company would have zero competition. I hope it would be fought hard against. Today's model is at least a duopoly.


It will eventually become a business necessity to form a joint company that effectively acts as the nursing home for DBS, managing its terminal decline this decade. We're not there yet though. Although the feds still might allow it now, at least if some kind of price guarantees were instituted.

And, of course, LEO satellite broadband could have a major impact on the equation too. Looks like Starlink will be available in the northern US and Canada later this year and the entire US in 2021.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

the future isn't traditional linear paytv anyway. Whether it's satellite or cable or these OTT cable services. 

I think we'll just see more investment in streaming. And I doubt the old way gets many investment dollars. I think they milk what they have. 

I can see satellite companies combining. It makes sense obviously. And with customers leaving and the rise of streaming, I think the monopoly obstacle is much less a concern for the government.

My brother still loves his DTV. But he is big on sports.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> I think you're way off in thinking that half of AT&T's home internet customers have sub-25 Mbps download speeds.


Quite possible.



> Don't see why they couldn't do what Hulu with Live TV does, which is charge extra for an "Unlimited Screens Add-on". Per their support site:


Also possible, but they need to have some offering to address that market, dwindling as it may be as people move more to OTT SVOD.



> I think T-Mobile is going to make a serious play for fixed wireless home broadband using a variety of 5G and 4G spectrum. (In fact, they've committed to doing so as one of the conditions of the Sprint merger.) They're already doing it a bit on long-range 600 MHz. The new 2.5 GHz spectrum from Sprint will be very important to their 5G network in metro areas and I'm pretty sure they've indicated that it will be used for home broadband too.


I'm skeptical on T-Mobile ever getting out into those rural areas. They bought Sprint, making them even more of a metro-market provider. Rural is one area that they could see growth, but they'd have to make massive investments to provide good coverage to those areas, which in most cases is not what they have today. Competing for some of the lighter cable users and smaller households within metro areas, sure, but I'm not convinced on rural. The proof will be in the pudding.



> It will eventually become a business necessity to form a joint company that effectively acts as the nursing home for DBS, managing its terminal decline this decade. We're not there yet though. Although the feds still might allow it now, at least if some kind of price guarantees were instituted.
> 
> And, of course, LEO satellite broadband could have a major impact on the equation too. Looks like Starlink will be available in the northern US and Canada later this year and the entire US in 2021.


What the feds will allow is total guessing game, they've been all over the place, not really following any consistent logic when it comes to anti-trust.

LEO is a wildcard. If it works out for home broadband, it will be transformative. However, it may still not have the capacity to replace live TV for those rural areas, even if it offers broadband. A lot remains to be seen there.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I'm skeptical on T-Mobile ever getting out into those rural areas. They bought Sprint, making them even more of a metro-market provider. Rural is one area that they could see growth, but they'd have to make massive investments to provide good coverage to those areas, which in most cases is not what they have today.


Well, they're doing a lot on band 71 (600 MHz) to extend their reach into the boonies. But yeah, maybe they concentrate their home broadband provisioning on suburban/exurban areas and don't do much way out in the truly rural areas. We'll see.

Here's their page about the future of their T-Vision cable TV service, which they're now referring to as "5G-Ready TV". The page references the promise they made during the merger negotiations to "deliver high-speed wireless broadband to 90% of the U.S., and in-home service to over half the country's households." Just above that, they're defining their wireless broadband service as having "100+ Mbps speeds". Hopefully the feds hold them to their promises. (And just to note, the federal gov't. defined just 21% of the US population in 2000 as rural. I'd guess it's a bit less now.)



Bigg said:


> LEO is a wildcard. If it works out for home broadband, it will be transformative. However, it may still not have the capacity to replace live TV for those rural areas, even if it offers broadband. A lot remains to be seen there.


Yes, a wildcard. But Starlink will have the same capacity everywhere, which means the average user in less-dense rural areas should have access to MORE bandwidth at any given moment than users in metro areas. And frankly, the number one reason anyone wants broadband is to stream video (whether that's live TV or some form of on-demand). I don't foresee any technical reason why a rural Starlink user wouldn't be able to stream YouTube TV, AT&T TV, etc. I mean, if doing something like that is a problem, then Starlink probably wouldn't be a viable business anyhow.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Well, they're doing a lot on band 71 (600 MHz) to extend their reach into the boonies. But yeah, maybe they concentrate their home broadband provisioning on suburban/exurban areas and don't do much way out in the truly rural areas. We'll see.


Their network is way too thin out in the boonies. Much of their rural coverage on the map is BS. They built the absolute bare minimum to fill in pink on a TV ad map, they would have to go back and rebuild those areas to build a real network.



> Here's their page about the future of their T-Vision cable TV service, which they're now referring to as "5G-Ready TV". The page references the promise they made during the merger negotiations to "deliver high-speed wireless broadband to 90% of the U.S., and in-home service to over half the country's households." Just above that, they're defining their wireless broadband service as having "100+ Mbps speeds". Hopefully the feds hold them to their promises. (And just to note, the federal gov't. defined just 21% of the US population in 2000 as rural. I'd guess it's a bit less now.)


That's 90% POPs, which says nothing. About 90% of POPs have cable available anyway. 90% POPs is around 10% coverage of the Lower 48, maybe a little more. Verizon is around 81% coverage in the Lower 48, AT&T has got to be up there now with FirstNET, and both cover around 98% POPs. T-Mobile today claims somewhere in the 96-97% POPs range, but the quality of coverage isn't always good.



> Yes, a wildcard. But Starlink will have the same capacity everywhere, which means the average user in less-dense rural areas should have access to MORE bandwidth at any given moment than users in metro areas. And frankly, the number one reason anyone wants broadband is to stream video (whether that's live TV or some form of on-demand). I don't foresee any technical reason why a rural Starlink user wouldn't be able to stream YouTube TV, AT&T TV, etc. I mean, if doing something like that is a problem, then Starlink probably wouldn't be a viable business anyhow.


It depends on how the bandwidth is doled out, and how the caps are set up. It could be super fast, but if it has a 100GB cap, it's sort of useless for more than a few short YouTube videos here and there.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> Their network is way too thin out in the boonies. Much of their rural coverage on the map is BS. They built the absolute bare minimum to fill in pink on a TV ad map, they would have to go back and rebuild those areas to build a real network.


I guess you've roamed the rural areas of the nation with a band 71-capable phone on the T-Mo network and done repeated speed tests?



Bigg said:


> That's 90% POPs, which says nothing. About 90% of POPs have cable available anyway. 90% POPs is around 10% coverage of the Lower 48, maybe a little more. Verizon is around 81% coverage in the Lower 48, AT&T has got to be up there now with FirstNET, and both cover around 98% POPs. T-Mobile today claims somewhere in the 96-97% POPs range, but the quality of coverage isn't always good.


No, T-Mobile isn't talking about POPs but covering actual percentages of the US population where they live. (And I'm pretty sure that 90% of the US population does not have cable broadband available at their residence, regardless of POPs.)

Key quotes from a T-Mo blog post of May 2019:

_In three years, we've committed that the New T-Mobile will cover 97% of the U.S. population with 5G on low-band spectrum and 75% of the population with 5G on mid-band spectrum. That will grow to 99% of the U.S. population covered with low-band 5G in six years and 88% with mid-band 5G.

We also established milestones to cover 85% of rural America with 5G on low-band spectrum in three years and 90% in six years. We set targets for the number of people with access to equal or greater than 100 Mbps and 50 Mbps average download speeds (hint: it's a lot&#8230; 90% and 99% of the country's population respectively in six years, and we even outlined how we'll verify those speeds with drive tests!)._​
It's fine to be skeptical that T-Mo will actually hit the goals that they promised to the FCC and the public in order to gain approval for the Sprint merger. But if they do hit those goals, it will make a real impact on the availability of high-speed internet in rural America.



Bigg said:


> It depends on how the bandwidth is doled out, and how the caps are set up. It could be super fast, but if it has a 100GB cap, it's sort of useless for more than a few short YouTube videos here and there.


Bandwidth (i.e. download speeds at any given moment) won't be the problem. Each of the satellites in the constellation have the same throughput capacity and any given residence will be served by many different satellites over time, with the user's antenna shifting from one sat to another about every five minutes. Any given satellite will serve all the subscribers in a given geographic area as it passes over. The more subscribers in that area there are, the lower the maximum available bandwidth will be for any given user since they're all sharing the same satellite (similar to how neighbors on the same HFC node share bandwidth.) I'm sure Starlink has designed each satellite so that it can handle quite a few folks simultaneously streaming video. So again, rural Starlink customers should have no problem streaming YouTube TV or any other HD or 4K OTT video.

Data caps, however, could be a problem. Which is really just another way of saying the cost of the Starlink service could be a problem (because if there are data caps, it's likely that users will be able to pay extra to buy more data). This, IMO, is the really big unanswered question about Starlink: how much will it cost?


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> I guess you've roamed the rural areas of the nation with a band 71-capable phone on the T-Mo network and done repeated speed tests?


No, but I've tested B12 coverage, which is nearly identical to B71, and I've read numerous reports about T-Mobile's tower spacing and coverage, and it's not a pretty picture. They would have to rebuild their entire network in large swaths of less-populated areas in order to compete with AT&T and Verizon.



> No, T-Mobile isn't talking about POPs but covering actual percentages of the US population where they live. (And I'm pretty sure that 90% of the US population does not have cable broadband available at their residence, regardless of POPs.)


That's literally POPs. Anything short of 97% POPs is sort of meaningless, since 97% of POPs live in something like 50% of the land. 90% of POPs live on around 10% of the land. 75% POPs is cities and suburbs.



> It's fine to be skeptical that T-Mo will actually hit the goals that they promised to the FCC and the public in order to gain approval for the Sprint merger. But if they do hit those goals, it will make a real impact on the availability of high-speed internet in rural America.


No, it won't. They set pretty meaningless goals, with the singular exception of 99% POPs with low-band, but that's likely based on projections of the extreme fringe of B12/71 coverage beyond what a normal phone could even pick up. T-Mobile has been the most egregious in the last few years in exaggerating coverage. It used to be Verizon, now they're the most conservative. 75% or even 88% POPs on mid-band 5G is pretty meaningless. I'm sure it will hit a few pockets here and there that are just outside of smaller cities and don't have broadband available, but it's not going to make a big impact in most truly rural areas.



> Bandwidth (i.e. download speeds at any given moment) won't be the problem. Each of the satellites in the constellation have the same throughput capacity and any given residence will be served by many different satellites over time, with the user's antenna shifting from one sat to another about every five minutes. Any given satellite will serve all the subscribers in a given geographic area as it passes over. The more subscribers in that area there are, the lower the maximum available bandwidth will be for any given user since they're all sharing the same satellite (similar to how neighbors on the same HFC node share bandwidth.) I'm sure Starlink has designed each satellite so that it can handle quite a few folks simultaneously streaming video. So again, rural Starlink customers should have no problem streaming YouTube TV or any other HD or 4K OTT video.


That's the problem. Current geosynchronous satellite systems can push at least 100mbps to a single user, if not well more, and are capable of gigabit in aggregate, but they're awful partly because of latency, but partly because they require massive over-subscription in order for their business model to work.

We'll have to see if LEO can put a band-aid over the real problem, which is our failed telecom policy. The system that we 100% know will work is a program to build out fiber to every household in the US currently connected to the electricity grid. It's a proven model, we just fail the political will to implement it uniformly across the US. States like Vermont, and local electric co-ops will continue to build out fiber where there is the funding and political will to do so.



> Data caps, however, could be a problem. Which is really just another way of saying the cost of the Starlink service could be a problem (because if there are data caps, it's likely that users will be able to pay extra to buy more data). This, IMO, is the really big unanswered question about Starlink: how much will it cost?


I'm always skeptical, because there are so many systems out there today where most of the bandwidth has been sucked up by higher-value customers like airlines, oil and gas extraction companies, railroads, trucking companies, and others who can pay orders of magnitude more for the same capacity as a home user reasonably can. Even if that weren't the case, I'm still skeptical that Starlink will be able to handle all the users out there that lack access to wireline broadband, much less if cell phones start integrating this in for areas that don't have terrestrial cell service.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

TMo got some coverage in my area a few years ago using B12 band or whatever that was.

But in the past few months they moved into town with a few corporate stores and have some real coverage now.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> No, it won't. They set pretty meaningless goals, with the singular exception of 99% POPs with low-band, but that's likely based on projections of the extreme fringe of B12/71 coverage beyond what a normal phone could even pick up. T-Mobile has been the most egregious in the last few years in exaggerating coverage. It used to be Verizon, now they're the most conservative. 75% or even 88% POPs on mid-band 5G is pretty meaningless. I'm sure it will hit a few pockets here and there that are just outside of smaller cities and don't have broadband available, but it's not going to make a big impact in most truly rural areas.


Sigh. You're stating (evidence-free, as usual) POP stats in order to contradict and ignore the literal language used by T-Mobile, which I'll state again here (link above), underlined emphasis mine:

_In three years, we've committed that the New T-Mobile will cover 97% of the U.S. population with 5G on low-band spectrum and 75% of the population with 5G on mid-band spectrum. That will grow to 99% of the U.S. population covered with low-band 5G in six years and 88% with mid-band 5G.

We also established milestones to cover 85% of rural America with 5G on low-band spectrum in three years and 90% in six years. We set targets for the number of people with access to equal or greater than 100 Mbps and 50 Mbps average download speeds (hint: it's a lot&#8230; 90% and 99% of the country's population respectively in six years, and we even outlined how we'll verify those speeds with drive tests!)._​
If you're simply stating that T-Mobile is lying and that they won't come close to hitting the promises they've made -- that 90% of the US population will be served at 100 Mbps or faster average speeds and 99% served at 50 Mbps or faster within six years -- then fine, just state that.

But if they make good on that, that will be significant. It will mean an additional broadband provider comes on the scene for a whole lot of Americans who now have either one or zero broadband option (not counting current satellite providers like HughesNet). Not sure what % of the population currently fall into that "0/1" category but the FCC said it was over 40% of US households (when including both wired and fixed wireless broadband providers) a few years ago.



Bigg said:


> I'm always skeptical, because there are so many systems out there today where most of the bandwidth has been sucked up by higher-value customers like airlines, oil and gas extraction companies, railroads, trucking companies, and others who can pay orders of magnitude more for the same capacity as a home user reasonably can. Even if that weren't the case, I'm still skeptical that Starlink will be able to handle all the users out there that lack access to wireline broadband, much less if cell phones start integrating this in for areas that don't have terrestrial cell service.


We'll see how it unfolds. I have to think Starlink and Amazon (who's pursuing a similar service with Project Kuiper) have crunched the numbers a bit more than you or I have. Unlike OneWeb, neither Starlink nor Amazon seem to be catering primarily to high-value industrial/business users.

I'm wondering whether the existing pool of consumers who currently have no decent broadband options will be big enough to profitably sustain the service. On a global basis, maybe. If not, that means that they'll be competing with mainstream providers, like cable operators.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Sigh. You're stating (evidence-free, as usual) POP stats in order to contradict and ignore the literal language used by T-Mobile, which I'll state again here (link above), underlined emphasis mine:


I'm not stating anything that's evidence-free. The fact of the matter is that T-Mobile's claims aren't impressive at all, with the possible exception of the 99% POPs low-band. 88% POPs is relatively meaningless.



> If you're simply stating that T-Mobile is lying and that they won't come close to hitting the promises they've made -- that 90% of the US population will be served at 100 Mbps or faster average speeds and 99% served at 50 Mbps or faster within six years -- then fine, just state that.


There has to be a caveat. Even if they drove around with a van that has a powerful cellular booster on it, that still is a ridiculous target. 90% POPs... maybe. If 88% have access to mid-band 5G, that's not too much of a stretch. The 99% POPs one is just downright ridiculous if you read it at face value.



> We'll see how it unfolds. I have to think Starlink and Amazon (who's pursuing a similar service with Project Kuiper) have crunched the numbers a bit more than you or I have. Unlike OneWeb, neither Starlink nor Amazon seem to be catering primarily to high-value industrial/business users.


We'll see. I'm just always skeptical of these things as they haven't worked out in the past. Their financial interest is in users who can either be charged for a short period of access (airline passenger, etc), or use little bandwidth (certain business systems). I could see home users getting rock solid 100mbps service that has a 250GB cap. Sure, a lot better than what they had, but it's not going to instantly bring them into the modern world of UHD streaming and 100GB game downloads.



> I'm wondering whether the existing pool of consumers who currently have no decent broadband options will be big enough to profitably sustain the service. On a global basis, maybe. If not, that means that they'll be competing with mainstream providers, like cable operators.


The big money is still in planes, busses, railroads, oil extraction, etc, etc. I don't think it really matters if they can compete directly with cable and fiber.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I'm not stating anything that's evidence-free. The fact of the matter is that T-Mobile's claims aren't impressive at all, with the possible exception of the 99% POPs low-band. 88% POPs is relatively meaningless.


Reaching 88% of the US population with mid-band 5G (which will offer download speeds well over 100 Mbps, and potentially over 1 gigabit/sec) is relatively meaningless? Haha, OK then.



Bigg said:


> We'll see. I'm just always skeptical of these things as they haven't worked out in the past.


I'm not aware of anything from the past similar to the scale and ambition of Starlink (or, presumably, Amazon's Project Kuiper).


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Reaching 88% of the US population with mid-band 5G (which will offer download speeds well over 100 Mbps, and potentially over 1 gigabit/sec) is relatively meaningless? Haha, OK then.


AT&T and Verizon did that with 4G years ago. Sure, T-Mobile's network will have a lot more capacity due to getting the n41 spectrum, so that they can offer widespread home internet access, but what they are building coverage wise is just catching up to the big players. And they will find once they go past 96% POPs that it gets a LOT harder. AT&T and Verizon have been trying to cover that last few % for decades, often in a haphazard way in fits and starts, but nonetheless it's a lot of work and requires a lot of capital. The only reason AT&T bothered to expand coverage recently was due to FirstNET.



> I'm not aware of anything from the past similar to the scale and ambition of Starlink (or, presumably, Amazon's Project Kuiper).


I guess we'll have to wait and see.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> AT&T and Verizon did that with 4G years ago.


Neither AT&T nor Verizon's 4G LTE offers the sort of typical download speeds that Sprint's existing mid-band 5G offers. And that's before T-Mo takes charge of it, expands it, and benefits from the next generation of hardware supporting mid-band 5G.

But beyond that, neither AT&T nor Verizon are offering fixed wireless home broadband service in a significant way that can compete with traditional wired operators, i.e. cable. And that's what T-Mo has already begun doing in a limited way with 4G LTE and will greatly expand, in scope and speed, with 5G.

Unlimited High-Speed In-Home Internet Services from T-Mobile


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Neither AT&T nor Verizon's 4G LTE offers the sort of typical download speeds that Sprint's existing mid-band 5G offers. And that's before T-Mo takes charge of it, expands it, and benefits from the next generation of hardware supporting mid-band 5G.


Their speeds are all over the place, but when and where they deploy enough bands and have enough backhaul, triple-digit speeds are common.



> But beyond that, neither AT&T nor Verizon are offering fixed wireless home broadband service in a significant way that can compete with traditional wired operators, i.e. cable. And that's what T-Mo has already begun doing in a limited way with 4G LTE and will greatly expand, in scope and speed, with 5G.


True, and the business model may be impressive, but the network isn't, and I don't expect it to ever be. I think they could easily compete for lighter cable users who need something better than Slow DSL, but want something cheaper than cable. I think that could be a huge success for them. But I don't expect them to magically fix rural broadband.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> True, and the business model may be impressive, but the network isn't, and I don't expect it to ever be. I think they could easily compete for lighter cable users who need something better than Slow DSL, but want something cheaper than cable. I think that could be a huge success for them. But I don't expect them to magically fix rural broadband.


Eh, I don't think they'll "magically fix rural broadband" but I do think T-Mobile will be part of the solution of improving the situation in the coming years. I think you're emotionally invested, due to your politics, in the idea that only a federally-backed universal FTTH solution will ever suffice and therefore you're predisposed to poo-poo everything else.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Eh, I don't think they'll "magically fix rural broadband" but I do think T-Mobile will be part of the solution of improving the situation in the coming years. I think you're emotionally invested, due to your politics, in the idea that only a federally-backed universal FTTH solution will ever suffice and therefore you're predisposed to poo-poo everything else.


I think they're going to be a minor part of the solution, and only in a few specific types of areas, like rural areas near a smallish city that has redlined/cherry-picked cable rollouts.

I like things that are hardwired. And in the case of broadband, they are the only thing that has been proven to work. We would already have universal gigabit FTTH if the government hadn't botched telecom policy so badly 20 years ago. If we didn't have a corrupt government/congress, AT&T, Verizon, and all their former areas would be funded by them, leaving relatively few areas that the government would have to finance. The networks are actually self-sustaining once you get financing for the initial capital investment. Vermont has one ILEC that got federal funding, and one non-ILEC that is self-sustaining, with another one that's getting started now.


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## ncbill (Sep 1, 2007)

Bigg said:


> Their speeds are all over the place, but when and where they deploy enough bands and have enough backhaul, triple-digit speeds are common.
> 
> True, and the business model may be impressive, but the network isn't, and I don't expect it to ever be. *I think they could easily compete for lighter cable users who need something better than Slow DSL, but want something cheaper than cable.* I think that could be a huge success for them. But I don't expect them to magically fix rural broadband.


I like my (grandfathered) $35/month AT&T "unlimited LTE for tablets" plan. It was easy to move the SIM to a hotspot once setup in a tablet.

I've used it for travel/backup, but now that everyone's home thanks to COVID I let them use the cable broadband and I use the hotspot.

~25MBps down...too bad it isn't available to new users.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

ncbill said:


> I like my (grandfathered) $35/month AT&T "unlimited LTE for tablets" plan. It was easy to move the SIM to a hotspot once setup in a tablet.
> 
> I've used it for travel/backup, but now that everyone's home thanks to COVID I let them use the cable broadband and I use the hotspot.
> 
> ~25MBps down...too bad it isn't available to new users.


Yeah, this is similar to what T-Mobile has begun doing for a few areas with 4G LTE home service, except it comes with the hotspot. Folks report varying speeds but there's no data cap and it costs a flat $50/mo, hardware included. They're supposed to get serious about this business and incorporate 5G into it now that they're merging Sprint's network into theirs. Once that happens, download speeds and availability will increase significantly.

Lots of homes have no use for super-fast broadband. The most demanding thing I do is stream 4K HDR video -- which might spike up to 35 Mbps momentarily but averages maybe 20 Mbps tops -- and when I'm doing that, virtually nothing else is drawing bandwidth at the same time. I have 100 Mbps from Comcast for $40/mo but if/when its jumps to the normal price ($73, I think), I'll just look for the cheapest option that gives me ~50 Mbps or faster. Right now that would be Toast.net, who resells access to the AT&T Fiber network. They offer uncapped 60/60 with included gateway for an every day price of $45.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Yeah, this is similar to what T-Mobile has begun doing for a few areas with 4G LTE home service, except it comes with the hotspot. Folks report varying speeds but there's no data cap and it costs a flat $50/mo, hardware included. They're supposed to get serious about this business and incorporate 5G into it now that they're merging Sprint's network into theirs. Once that happens, download speeds and availability will increase significantly.
> 
> Lots of homes have no use for super-fast broadband. The most demanding thing I do is stream 4K HDR video -- which might spike up to 35 Mbps momentarily but averages maybe 20 Mbps tops -- and when I'm doing that, virtually nothing else is drawing bandwidth at the same time. I have 100 Mbps from Comcast for $40/mo but if/when its jumps to the normal price ($73, I think), I'll just look for the cheapest option that gives me ~50 Mbps or faster. Right now that would be Toast.net, who resells access to the AT&T Fiber network. They offer uncapped 60/60 with included gateway for an every day price of $45.


Most users are probably happy with 100mbps. That's about what I have. The uploads will actually be an advantage for T-Mobile 5G if cable doesn't get off their derriere and do some upgrades to mid- or high-split.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> Most users are probably happy with 100mbps. That's about what I have.


I think lots of folks are clueless about how much/little bandwidth they actually need for their household. I'd say the vast majority of 1-2 person households would never know if their download speed was secretly reduced to 50 Mbps. They just never exceed that unless they're downloading something. And even then, it's only noticeable if we're talking about a really large file, like a video game download.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> I think lots of folks are clueless about how much/little bandwidth they actually need for their household. I'd say the vast majority of 1-2 person households would never know if their download speed was secretly reduced to 50 Mbps. They just never exceed that unless they're downloading something. And even then, it's only noticeable if we're talking about a really large file, like a video game download.


And half the time their Wi-Fi sucks anyway.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> And half the time their Wi-Fi sucks anyway.


Yeah. Great majority of the time, I'd say, people's bandwidth issues aren't at the ISP level but due to a poor wi-fi signal or other home network issues.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Yeah. Great majority of the time, I'd say, people's bandwidth issues aren't at the ISP level but due to a poor wi-fi signal or other home network issues.


Yeah that's often the case. It's appalling to me how many people don't do basic testing or troubleshooting of their internet speed.


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## JLV03 (Feb 12, 2018)

From the Orby webpage Orby TV - $40 a Month High Quality Prepaid Satellite TV :

Dear Orby TV Customer,

We are sorry to announce that Orby TV has closed its doors, and the Orby TV service has ended. It was an honor to serve you.

To provide you with an affordable satellite TV option going forward, we have coordinated with DISH on a special offer for Orby TV customers. This includes a monthly DISH programming package for $52.99 (includes first receiver) and cost to switch as low as $100. For more information about this limited time offer, please call DISH at 844-268-3304 and mention the offer code *ORBY* or visit dish.com/orby.

Sincerely,

Your friends at Orby TV


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

JLV03 said:


> We are sorry to announce that Orby TV has closed its doors, and the Orby TV service has ended. It was an honor to serve you.


I'm surprised it took this long. Never made sense from the get-go.


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## MikeBear (May 21, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I'm surprised it took this long. Never made sense from the get-go.


They wait at least 10 years too late to start up. Too many people now have regular streaming options, so the few people that don't have access to high speed internet and knew about Orby, weren't enough to support them.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

MikeBear said:


> They wait at least 10 years too late to start up. Too many people now have regular streaming options, so the few people that don't have access to high speed internet and knew about Orby, weren't enough to support them.


They were a lousy DISH knock-off. That market already has DISH, and wouldn't want a lousy knock-off of it.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

JLV03 said:


> From the Orby webpage Orby TV - $40 a Month High Quality Prepaid Satellite TV :
> 
> Dear Orby TV Customer,
> 
> ...


$100 to switch? Aint that dandy!!


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## MikeBear (May 21, 2015)

mattyro7878 said:


> $100 to switch? Aint that dandy!!


...AND sign a two year contract...


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

MikeBear said:


> ...AND sign a two year contract...


Sounds pretty standard. If you're out in the sticks or have lousy internet, it's not like you have much choice. DirecTV is $$$$ more.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> They were a lousy DISH knock-off. That market already has DISH, and wouldn't want a lousy knock-off of it.


Well, for what they offered, Orby was arguably a better deal than DISH, and they had the appeal of being contract-free. So I'd say that did carve out a differentiated market niche, it's just that it was too small to succeed. They basically appealed only to those without broadband (mainly rural) but who could get their locals via OTA or didn't care about them, and who didn't care about sports channels, and who found DISH to be too expensive or restrictive. Pretty small niche.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Well, for what they offered, Orby was arguably a better deal than DISH, and they had the appeal of being contract-free. So I'd say that did carve out a differentiated market niche, it's just that it was too small to succeed. They basically appealed only to those without broadband (mainly rural) but who could get their locals via OTA or didn't care about them, and who didn't care about sports channels, and who found DISH to be too expensive or restrictive. Pretty small niche.


That's a niche of a niche of a niche, not enough for a DBS business. And they're competing against DISH with way more channels, Hopper 3, etc.


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