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BROADBAND SATELLITE BROADCASTING - A DIGITAL FIGHT CHANNEL FOREIGN MARKET GROWTH FUELED BY TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION When satellite signals were converted from analog to digital technology in the mid-'90s, things really began to change. Equipment prices came down, as did the cost per channel. Digital conversion spawned the direct-to-home broadcast market. There is a revolution in the wireless broadband market which will soon make high-speed Internet access affordable and available to virtually every home and small business in the United States. In December, 2002, WildBlue Communications received $156 million from Liberty Satellite, Intelstat, and NRTC for developing the first Ka-band GEO satellite system capable of providing continuous, two-way broadband access. This large investment, in the face of tough financial markets, is a strong endorsement of WildBlue’s ability to revolutionize wireless broadband. PanAmSat, a satellite provider, which was the first to beam Internet service in 1989, says that digital conversion for receiving has reduced the cost 50-fold over the past 20 years. Satellites are expected to solve broadband's last-mile problem of how to create a high-speed link beaming fights on the Internet into households. Pioneer Consulting, a market research firm, predicts the market for broadband satellite services will be worth as much as $20 billion in 2005. These new satellites will offer another way for developing countries to climb onto the Internet highway and receive a large selection of boxing content. In Southeast Asia, home to 25 percent of the world's population, only 0.04 percent of the people use the Internet. Satellites will provide the necessary uplink. A DIGITAL FIGHT CHANNEL BORN IN LAS VEGAS Satellites will provide broadband to both hard-to-reach areas and emerging markets, a boom for fight content involving boxers throughout the world. New ventures are promising to bring high-speed communication links to the market in the next few years. Hughes already has solid technology and a strong reputation. PanAmSat's satellites currently enable U.S. programmers such as ESPN and HBO to reach targeted audiences with their periodic fights throughout the world. PanAmSat distributes television programming, which enables hundreds of broadcasters to satisfy the demand for content virtually everywhere in the world. PanAmSat's satellites deliver the leading names in broadcasting to cable systems and broadcast affiliate stations nationwide in the U.S. In fact, virtually every one of the 98 million television households in the United States receives television programming from one of their satellites. International programmers as far away as China and India are able to reach the highly desirable U.S. television audience by transmitting signals directly to the nearly 11,000 cable systems and the nearly 2 million home dish users throughout the United States. PanAmSat provides international program distribution services to dozens of non-U.S. broadcasters such as the BBC, China Central Television, India's Doordarshan and Japan's NHK. UNPRECEDENTED CONTENT GreatFightsOnline's high volume of fight content will flow from boxing shows put on by BoxingShow.com franchisee-promoters worldwide. Fights made at GetAFight.com will enable GreatFightsOnline's to be a fight channel with unprecedented content, geographically and in quantity and quality, but with a new, honest, transparent, and more lucrative revenue model for everyone, especially the fighters. Anticipating cries for reforming the competition process, Don King, acting as his own NFL of boxing arranging competition for HIS "Superbowl," recently promoted the middleweight championship series and is now trying to tie up contractually all the heavyweights in anticipation of promoting a heavyweight championship series. These moves are reminiscent of his advanced signing of fighters competing in the 1976 United States Boxing Championships sponsored and aborted midstream by ABC Sports. For a discussion of his involvement in the ABC tournament, see U.S. Boxing Championships. The free agency afforded by GetAFight.com and a promoter's digital fight channel like GreatFightsOnline will open a new era in boxing. FightersOnline Home GreatFightsOnline Home |