DirecTV Gets Control of Satellite
The Boeing Corporation this morning announced that it has transferred control of the DirecTV 11 satellite over to DirecTV. This means that the DirecTV satellite is now parked in its final orbital location and will soon be turned on to deliver customers more high definition, including new HD locals for many cities.
The DirecTV 11 satellite blasted off on March 19th and has been in testing at various orbital locations in space. The satellite has been moved to 99.2 degrees and is now basically ready for DirecTV to use.
While it has been announced that the new satellite will be turned on in September, it is being rumored that DirecTV could see the first new channels from DirecTV on August 13th.
Some DirecTV customers have noticed that under the satellite setup menu that there is now a new listing for a satellite called 99c, this is the new DirecTV 11 satellite. Currently all the transponders show 0 for a signal reading, but I look for that to change as they get it ready to go. It will be fun watching each transponder light up one by one.
If you happen to catch one of the transponders lighting up please feel free to post your discovery here in our feedback section. If you are a satellite geek like me, then there is nothing more exciting then watching a new satellite bloom to life!
Happy sky scanning!
XM Close to 10 Million Customers Milestone
Today XM Satellite Radio announced that they have signed up 9.6 million customers. That is just shy of the major milestone of 10 million.
XM’s numbers for the last quarter looked impressive adding 1,081,000 customers during the last quarter. These numbers actually surprised me because it appeared as though the sales were down with the uncertainty of the merger. I know a lot of folks I know said they wouldn’t subscribe until after the merger was done as they didn’t want to get stuck with equipment that would not work with both companies.
At this time the FCC still has not approved the merger of XM with Sirius Satellite Radio.