Satellite Everywhere!

Greetings from the Island of Roatan, Honduras, (actually I am exactly at 16 18.73 N 086 32.66 W) going to an island like this gives a satellite guy like me a new respect for the power of satellite.  And it also makes me happy that I live in the United States.  We don’t know how good we have got things here, especially when you come to some of the places I have visited so far this week.

It was amazing driving around the island and seeing how much the natives here rely on satellite technology.  The natives actually did not have much at all but most of them did have satellite dishes attached to what they called houses.

It was amazing to see how these folks live with dogs running around on the loose, chickens running around in the yard and a satellite dish’s aimed in the sky.

Most of the dishes were not branded, although I did see a few DirecTV Latin America dishes, as well as a number of HughesNet dishes, the rest were generic 1.2 meter dishes. Me as a tourist can only wonder what in the skies they were aiming at.  Whatever it is what they are seeing is probably the only view of the outside world these folks have.  Here there is no cable television, nor any ground based high speed Internet.  Satellite is their only connection to the outside world.

Here on the cruise ship satellite keeps us hooked up to the mainland with the American networks fed to rooms.  One of the channels my kids like most is Cartoon Network.  This Cartoon Network is not like the one at home, instead this Cartoon Network shows the cartoons in English yet most of the commercials are in Spanish.

Satellite television even seems to be used in Cuba, as when I was sailing by I took my laptop and a TV tuner card and was able to pull in 14 television stations from the island.  What I thought was interesting was with 14 channels there were only 3 things to watch and 2 of them were American shows or movies.  For example they were showing Law & Order: Special Victoms Unit from NBC.  What I found interesting was they covered up the NBC logo on the screen and they added Spanish subtitles and took out all the commercials.  I have a feeling that the Cubans probably don’t have NBC’s permission to run their shows, but that’s not stopping the Cubans from enjoying some prime American television.  And it was not just American television shows the Cubans were showing but also American Movies, as Indiana Jones was also being shown the night I sailed through.  Again they added Spanish subtitles and omitted any commercials.  So even in Cuba they use satellite technology to connect their residents to the outside world.

I picked a great week to take a vacation, as it is a slow news week, but as I am out here sailing around the ocean I will continue to monitor the industry and if any news breaks I will be sure to post it here to the Satellite Dish.