US satellite broadband provider StarBand has said it will cease services on 30 September, citing increased costs, bandwidth demand and growing competition from other consumer players. The group, which claimed to be the country’s first nationwide…
US satellite broadband provider StarBand has said it will cease services on 30 September, citing increased costs, bandwidth demand and growing competition from other consumer players.
The group, which claimed to be the country’s first nationwide residential two-way satellite internet provider when it launched in 2000, directed former customers on its website to its main rivals: EchoStar-controlled HughesNet and ViaSat’s Exede.
Its collapse highlights the challenges facing providers to gain a critical mass of subscribers, and comes as new companies such as OneWeb and SpaceX plot larger and more complex satellite systems to break into the broadband market.
StarBand claimed to have about 35,000 subscribers at one point. Its troubles began just two years after it was founded when a legal dispute with one-time shareholder EchoStar helped push it into temporary bankruptcy in 2002.
Israel’s Gilat Satellite Networks, which was also a strategic partner in the initial joint venture along with Microsoft, acquired StarBand in 2005 under its managed services unit Spacenet. The group sold that unit for about US$16m in late 2013 to SageNet, a US technology solutions provider, to focus on satcoms.
Spacenet was founded in 1981 but became non-core to Gilat after transitioning from being primarily a VSAT services company to a managed network services firm.
