C-Band at the End?
Looks like the consumer C-Band business will be dead and gone by
the end of this year. After hearing from several retailers about
rumors that Motorola would cease its authorization stream, we started making inquires. No response from Motorola but Mike Monfort of National Programming Service (NPS) confirms that the demise is likely.
"We
had a conference call in late December when Motorola talked about
discontinuing the authorization stream on April 15th," Monfort says.
After some protests and concerted lobbying, the giant manufacturer
boosted prices by 20%, agreed to continue service until the end of the
year and said they will then decide the future.
Motorola will
almost certainly discontinue the service, Monfort says, so his National
Programming Service (NPS) has ceased selling annual subscriptions.
That's bad news for many retailers and C-Band's current 22,606
subscribers. "The people who are left love their C-Band," Monfort
says. But Motorola apparently finds the business inconvenient ... and
so an era is coming to an end.•
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