DN and N3 from the CEO

 

Gold Member
Username: Justforhahas

Post Number: 1623
Registered: Jul-08
DN CEO Says Nagra3 in 2009



According to an interview on November 10, 2008, DN will only start implementing Nagra3 in smaller packages in the first quarter of 2009, likely the international packages. Full implementation will not likely be until this time next year. Of course by then a great deal will be missing.

Charlie E

"It's hard -- I can't predict piracy. I don't think we are in a position in the fourth quarter to have an impact on it. I think it will be a first quarter next year before we started having an impact and it will be this time next year before we totally are secure
 

New member
Username: Babe_ruthless

Post Number: 5
Registered: Dec-08
LOL!Well it's good to see that charlie views the glass as half full.
 

New member
Username: Olds

Post Number: 2
Registered: Dec-08
dis is bery bery good news
 

Silver Member
Username: Tigger_woods

WONT BE GOLFING, UNTIL BUICK OPEN

Post Number: 859
Registered: Jun-07
Justforhaha is very credible!!! if I heard it from anybody else I would say hold the phone.....This is GREAT GREAT NEWS!!!!!

What I am hearing from this is...a guy like me that is quite content with 205,132,133,106 and 185, I am good for maybe a year...

RIGHT ON MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Silver Member
Username: Tigger_woods

WONT BE GOLFING, UNTIL BUICK OPEN

Post Number: 861
Registered: Jun-07
Here`s the entire article

N3 News, Good Read For All...

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N3 News, Good Read For All...

C&P!!!

DISH Network Corporation (DISH) - Q3 2008 Earnings Call

November 10, 2008 12:00 pm ET


Tom Egan - Collins Stewart

Great, thank you. Just two questions. First on churn, I was hoping you could give us a little bit more detail about how much of the increase was voluntary versus involuntary? And then I have a follow up. Thanks.

(Churn rate - Definition)
For any given period of time, the number of participants who discontinue their use of a service divided by the average number of total participants. Churn rate provides insight into the growth or decline of the subscriber base as well as the average length of participation in the service.

Charlie Ergen

Well, it's a little bit difficult to answer that because we have a dynamic that probably nobody else has but wishes to have, the system that's not secure. So we still have a fair amount of PIRACY out there in the marketplace. So somebody who might be voluntary May just be getting a pirate box. So it's a little bit difficult. I would say the churn is made up of a couple different components. One is our normal churn, normal course of business and that's probably under some pressure from the economy, but it's certainly not as high as our churn numbers.

The second and third parts of churn really are PIRACY and really consumer fraud, kind of stuff where you see we may have -- we had retailers who might have been engaging in fraudulent accounts and so forth and so on. Two things that obviously are part of operations things that we probably didn't do such a good job on and didn't invest in enough those things we are investing in today.

So we are in the process of all new SmartCard encryption systems being sent to our customers. That's a process that goes into next year but we will be able to start turning some customers off that we know are the high PIRACY pockets much sooner than that as we get those programs all converted over and make sure the cards are out.

So while there's a cost of doing that, again it's in operational inefficiency to send out SmartCards. At least we know we are able to resecure our system. And then obviously on the fraud front we are really are terminating and even prosecuting where we find fraud, so those areas we are doing a much better job and that will pay dividends for us next year.
Tom Egan - Collins Stewart

So is it fair to think that the number, that the PIRACY securing could increase in 4Q?

Charlie Ergen

It's hard -- I can't predict PIRACY. I don't think we are in a position in the fourth quarter to have an impact on it. I think it will be a first quarter next year before we started having an impact and it will be this time next year before we totally are secure.


Tom Egan - Collins Stewart

Right and then...

Charlie Ergen

And then, that's assuming the next-generation of our system holds of course, which we hope it will.

Bryan Kraft - Banc of America Securities

First just following up on the PIRACY issue. Do you have any kind of estimate, even if it's just a rough range as to what the impact on churn actually has been? And also, when exactly did the PIRACY problems start to become significant for you?

And then my two other questions, one, how are you planning to leverage the Eastern Arc Service that you launched in the fourth quarter into improving customer metrics?

Bryan Kraft - Banc of America Securities - Okay, that's fair.

Bernie Han - There's some other things, but relatively...

Charlie Ergen

That would give you a pretty good indication. The PIRACY probably started in the spring as a material item, probably in the spring of 2007. We've obviously been in a lot of litigation with people that are doing it. But it's probably the spring of 2007. And PIRACY is one of those things where -- and so I can't quantify how it's affecting churn but it's certainly has a negative impact on churn.

And PIRACY tends to grow. So if not stopped it tends to grow a little bit each quarter. So I would say the PIRACY today is quite a bit more than it was in 2007. It's one of those things where it's a significant investment from an operational point of view for us to do it to send out cards and we had to wait until we had a new encryption system to send out. Because first, you have to see how the pirates are beating you and then you have to go design a way to counteract it.

So, I think we are not as diligent as we should have been, which won't happen the next time is. We should have always assumed that the pirates will beat us and somebody else and everybody else in the industry. And we always should have a next-generation ready to go as opposed to have to go out and get the next-generation.

So we really got delayed a year longer than we would have liked to while we designed the next-generation with our encryption vendor. So in the future, even as we finish this roll-out of new encryption, we will have another generation beyond that ready to go. So we won't make that mistake again.


Bryan Kraft - Banc of America Securities
And you mentioned that I think you said before in the first quarter all of the new cards will be deployed and you will be ready to shutoff the old encryption. But I think you said a few minutes ago it would be until the third quarter that you get the full benefit of that. I'm trying to understand exactly what you mean there.

Charlie Ergen

Yes. What happens is for example you may be able to do to all your high-definition customers and since that's a smaller subset of your base and you can make sure they can have all new cards and you can shut that data stream off. So that you can secure your High-Definition signal.

As an example. You can do that before you have your whole subscriber base within the card. So sometime next year we will be able to start turning off segments, subsets of our subscriber base and it will be sometime next year before we can turn off the entire base. And I don't know exactly when that will be, because you never know how long it takes to send them out but we think it's sometime in the next year for sure.

Matthew Armas - Goldman Sachs
Thanks for taking the question, just a couple quick ones. From what you have said and concerning what was in the Q., big spending initiatives around the PIRACY of the upgrades, to the MPEG-4 and the customer service investment. Can you say, as you budgeted for those investments, did you budget relatively evenly through the next couple of quarters or when you talk about not seeing returns until '09, is that just return and the bulk of the spending has already been executed?

Charlie Ergen

Yes, I can answer that, I guess from my personal perspective. I think, as I got a bit more involved in the day-to-day operations, I realized that the some of the investments we are making were short-term and we needed to make some longer term investments. The longer term investments were a little bit more expensive than where budget would be, right? Because obviously budget was based on where management thought we should be spending.

But as we got into it and we started to ask, I got five rules around here, but one of them is think long-term. And when you really got management thinking long-term they came back with different places they want to spend their money. I think the right place to spend their money. When you spend for long-term it typically is a little more expensive than short- term money and it pays dividends for you long-term. You get a return on investment if you do it right. But it doesn't show up in 2008 for sure. And we probably, and it's my fault, but we probably had too much of a short-term outlook at the lower levels of our company and I just wasn't aware of that, to be honest with you.

Everything about what we do is we should be thinking about long-term and where we are five or ten years from now as opposed to where we are next quarter. And you can always have an eye on next quarter but you really have to think about where you are going to be in the years ahead. I have great confidence that we are one of the few companies that can think long-term. There are not a lot of companies that are able to do that. Or as long-term as we -- so, its fortunate.

This is an interesting environment. It's a good environment for us. Your mistakes are magnified. Your successes are magnified. You've got to be good to be successful in this environment, and we are not as good as we'd like to be but it's going to be a fun environment no matter what.

With that we will, I guess be back on sometime early next year or sometime for the year end, right? So, thanks for joining us.
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Enjoy It...

Good Luck...

From Caribbean!!!
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