Cidera Chairman Offers Bold Predictions About Satellite Technology

Satellite Today
Copyright 2001 Phillips Business Information, Inc.

Tuesday, June 13, 2001

By Paul Dykewicz

ARLINGTON, Va. - Digital television most likely will never end up in the living rooms of most Americans, even though satellites can deliver the service seamlessly, predicted Doug Humphrey, the chairman and founder of Cidera, a Laurel, Md.-based provider of broadband content to the edge of the Internet. People will have no incentive to discard their existing television sets and replace them with high-cost versions that can provide little else besides a digital signal, Humphrey told more than one hundred attendees at the "Satellite Internet Applications and Opportunities" conference yesterday.

"HDTV is dead," Humphrey said. "HDTV faces the curse of the installed base." Digital television, also called HDTV, will be shunned by the general viewing public, except by those who get digital reception through their satellite TV services, Humphrey explained. Humphrey, the luncheon keynote speaker, also offered a host of other observations that included building satellites that are no more complex than necessary to perform a particular mission, the drying up of vendor financing and the technical challenges of Ka-band services. As far as the need to keep satellite technology simple, Humphrey said that "smart" satellites are a dumb idea. Technology changes too quickly in the telecommunications world, he added. Since satellites cannot be retrofitted once they are launched, the best approach is to launch functional satellites that can incorporate technological improvements in the ground equipment, Humphrey said.

For entrepreneurs in need of backers, "Vendor financing is dead," Humphrey said. Such financing was widely available for assorted telecommunications projects two and three years ago but now the pendulum has swung in the other direction, he explained. Companies such as Lucent Technologies Inc. [LU] and Nortel Networks Corp. [NI] are under fire for having been to liberal in extending vendor financing to ambitious but undercapitalized start-ups.

Ka-band satellites may have a future in providing broadband last-mile access, but they still need to contend with rain interference and "moisture fade" issues, Humphrey noted. "I am kind of being a cynic," Humphrey said. "I'm poking fun at everybody. It's up to people to prove me wrong."

Back to Conference Newsroom