Starband Files for Chapter 11

PalmKiller writes "Well it looks like Starband is going into chapter 11. I got the email a few days ago. And just when I got CYGWIN with squid proxy working beautifully. With winproxy I rarely got any thoughput on my clients (20-50KBytes/sec or 160-360Kbits/sec), on squid I finally am getting 80-95KBytes/sec (640-760Kbits/sec continuously) and some faster bursts. Well, I guess I will ride her till she falls over and dies." Looks like Echostar's tactics have been successful. And we just did an article a few weeks ago on Starband's service, where most commenters weren't very happy.

Comments

Users

[hoowee]

More info on the Starband User's experience available here

Adelphia

[scott1853]

I'm sure Adelphia Cable is next. They just got delisted from Nasdaq last week and are apparently involved in a little Enron mimmicking. Something like 2 billion worth of debt was kept off the books. I don't have the links handy but just lookup Adelphia Trouble in Google and I'm sure you'll find a hundred articles.

Re:Adelphia

[ender81b]

Links:

Adelphia postpones quarterly report due to 'accounting discrepancies'

More on accounting problems (google cache)

Adelphia selling off assets (google cache)

Absolutely ridiculous. All these telecoms going bye-bye. Where the fsck did the people who ran these business get their degrees? I mean, for god's sake, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if your company is 2 billion in debt maybe you shouldn't pay like 50 million to liscense a stadium (titan's adelphia stadium). Or perhaps you shouldn't get those $100,000 sun boxen. Always a favourite of mine - listening to all this super expensive brand-new equipment these companies have. Ebay anyone?

It just boggles my mind that somehow these morons got put in charge of a company like this. Take starband - why in god's name would you ban something like P2P filesharing programs? These programs are like the #1 reason people (Especially younger people) want to get broadband - but you filter them out. Great business strategy. Gee, I wonder why you are going bankrupt?

It just pisses me off that these morons who ran the company will get to live off of 'only 50 million' like that b*tch from Enron while 1,000 or more employees will have to try and have to scrape together a living. Argggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

</RANT<

So what is left for rural areas?

[SlashChick]

Having grown up in a rural area, and having friends and parents who still live in an area that just got 56K phone lines, this issue is important.

I can remember back in the day when AOL and other ISPs promised 98-99% local number coverage, and we were still in that other 1%. We didn't have local dial-up until 1996, when the local pharmacist (!) and his wife set up a T1 and modem pool out of their garage.

My question is: what is going to happen to these communities? With the FCC pushing toward one DSL provider and one cable provider per town, this is going to merit absolute disaster in a town that Verizon doesn't care about and where there practically isn't a cable company (the cable company went out of business three times in three years; everyone gave up and got satellite.)

I sense a real impending disaster that could perhaps be averted by something like fixed wireless. Are there feasibility studies on the 'Net (cost analyses, etc.) that show the costs of putting in a fixed wireless or other broadband setup? I've seen the case studies, many of which are posted on Slashdot. However, they fail to touch in the bigger problem, which is that this applies to 20% of the country.

If we want people to have broadband, someone is going to have to come up with a plan to offer it over large service areas over something that is not a phone or a cable line. Do we have answers yet? What is on the horizon?

Slashdot: antinews for nerds, nothing else matters

[babbage]

Guys, first rule of journalism (and for that matter, of getting an "A" on any paper you had to write after, say, the 4th grade): make sure you cover

• who
• what
• where
• when
• [for bonus points] how & why

Before reading this, I had no idea who Starband was, what they did, where I might have known them from, etc. After reading it ...I still don't know, but I know that they're out of money and that it messes up some guy's Cygwin/Squid setup. But I don't *care* about some guy's Cygwin/Squid setup. If you want to convince the reader that this is important, maybe it would make more sense to mention, I dunno, who the fuck Starband is and why the hell it would matter to anyone if they're broke.

And to think I once saw Slashdot as journalism's great shining democratic hope. Oh the disappointment of reality.... :/

What I first thought it said

[reschly]

and would have also made me a lot happier:

Starbucks files for chapter 11.

Re:Those crazy creditors!

[GigsVT]

Major Shareholders:

EchoStar: Entered into marketing agreement with Starband and owns 30% of stock. Failed to perform on marketing agreement (which was to sell starband bundled with Dish Network collect the payments for a while, and then turn over the accounts to Starband in Feburary). Their failure to perform on this agreement has driven Starband into bandruptcy, because Starband does not know who to bill for their service, and thus, has basically zero revenue.

Echostar wants to kill Starband, because they are trying to buy Hughes, who owns DirectTV and has their own Satellite Internet product, which would make Echostar a lot more money than their arrangement with Starband does.

Echostar held several board seats at Starband, until they got interested in buying Hughes.

Other major shareholders:
Gilat - Provides the satellite network and services. Don't know if there is any sleezy goings on here.

Microsoft - Apparently pressured Starband into not allowing open source developers access to the protocols needed to build anything other than a Windows client for Starband. Starband is very Linux friendly, they even will provide the software you need to do Internet connection sharing, so that you can use Starband with non-MS computers, but they refuse to release the specs, for suspicious reasons.

Starband has nothing to lose by ditching the scum that makes up it's major shareholders.