EchoStar to Hawk Sling Media Products to Cable TV Operators, Telcos

By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 1/7/2008 2:07:00 PM

LAS VEGAS -- Charlie Ergen and his new technology company, EchoStar Holdings, Monday said that they are aggressively planning to sell products – from Sling Media-enabled modems to set-tops – to Dish Network’s video rivals, namely cable operators and telcos.

Ergen and Blake Krikorian, co-founder and chairman of Sling Media, both described the efforts of the spin-off company, EchoStar Holdings, to seek buyers for its products beyond Dish Network, the direct-broadcast satellite service.

“As a set-top manufacturer, EchoStar Corp. will certainly try to build products and sell them to the cable industry,” Ergen said during a press conference here at the Consumer Electronics Show.

“The phone industry, same thing, whether they go fiber to the home or fiber to the curb, we’ll have a two-way product,” Ergen added. “So we hope to make product for them as well … Hopefully, other companies will buy product from us.”

Earlier in the day, Sling Media, a subsidiary of EchoStar Holdings, announced

the development and CableLabs certification of the first cable modem to fully integrate the place-shifting capabilities pioneered in the original Slingbox.

With the SlingModem customers can watch and control their TV programming on any Internet-connected computing device just as they would in front of the living room television.

At the press conference, Krikorian noted that when EchoStar bought Sling Media last year, customers and the TV industry had questioned whether EchoStar would limit his company’s focus to just products for Dish Network and other satellite TV service operators.

But the introduction of the SlingModem signals Sling Media’s strategy of being “operator-agnostic,” according to Krikorian.

He said Sling Media is working with U.S. and international cable operators, and will deliver its SlingModem to them in 2008.

The SlingModem provides the cable customer with both a broadband connection as well as the placeshifting functionality made famous by the Slingbox.

As of Jan. 1, EchoStar Communications split into two companies, the video distributor Dish Network with more than 13 million subscribers and EchoStar Holdings, which includes its set-top business and Sling Media.

After the press conference, EchoStar Holdings president Mark Jackson also reiterated his company’s strategy, and said it is just starting its sales effort to pitch cable companies products such as its DVRs.