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Well I like whatever I find best, I know I probably sound like a shill for them but I don't work there, own any stocks, etc. Also when traveling in a RV, Dish
by Keverw 7y ago
Well I like whatever I find best, I know I probably sound like a shill for them but I don't work there, own any stocks, etc.
Also when traveling in a RV, Dish has a dedicated site for RVers. I'm in a few groups on FB and this is a complaint people have about DirecTV because when you move around people complain about local channels. They are spot beamed, so you have to call up the 1800 number and change your address. People would mention they'd give them a address of a random house from the white pages, while telling them to keep the billing address the same as their mail forwarder in the state of their domicile but agents would get confused and schedule a move instead. While with Dish, just go online and change your zip code. It's a niche market though, many people see RVs are a vacation, while some people full time so it's a concept that's hard for people to understand if not familiar with it.
But one of my points was also competition. I feel like satellite industry can be more competitive since I don't think the local cities have much control over them, and not much stuff to build out. Like for example Verizon was rolling out FIOS but stopped. Google Fiber seems to have similar problems of rolling out, for example look at the case in Louisville. Some cities even wanted to offer their own fiber networks but the cable companies sued them saying they wasn't allowed. So legal problems of permitting and stuff, then you have to actually just digging trenches and running cables. Even cities that offer Fiber, it's more of a street by street thing if it's available or not instead of city wide.
I know SpaceX is working on internet. There's another company offering satellite internet too that's supposed to be comparable to cable but they use spot beaming too for load balancing. So not useful for RVers or even smart cars that need internet access on the go. However having Satellite Radio in the car, going under bridges, parking garages, tunnels, even some area under the powerlines at a intersection it goes out so that's also a flaw... I'm not sure what's Tesla plans are for that area, as I think Elon being involved in both companies is related but haven't been keeping up with the news.
But imagine if you had high quality satellite internet, no towers to build and you'd just need to send out contractors to install it on peoples houses, RVs, or whatever. Some people are probably capable enough to just do it themselves after you mail the kit, I know most people just lease satellite TV hardware but you can actually buy it straight out like if using it in a RV. Would expand options with limited areas. Just have to build the satellites and get approval to launch it, build out some ground stations and ready to roll. There's even a federal law limiting how much local city governments can regulate satellites called OTARD. Some cities even still have ordinances that ban satellite tv, even though it's been overruled already. HOA's do the same. Cities lose money when people have satellite, HOA's think they are ugly. There are proposals to expand OTARD to cover 5G too as some cities aren't supporting the 5G rollout. It's shame the cable industry is a protected monopoly.
I'm a major tech geek, which probably a lot of people are on HN. So things like satellites, cruise ships that are entire floating cities, rvs fascinate me. I know some people are obsessed with elevators or trains. So just wanted to disclose that, as don't want to sound like an advertisement for Dish.
Also feel like when starting a business, doing as much as you can possibly do yourself can let you have higher control of the quality of your product. Think Apple, they make the iPhone and MacBook and you can send SMS from your Mac using the modem in your phone. While say you are a huge hardware maker, you could sell Laptops with Windows on them and phones with Android but you don't have much control to integrate them.