EchoStar’s Veiled Slam at Cable Broadband Policy and People

[Commentary] Although you may admire the EchoStar/Hughes’ guerrilla marketing tactic and its frequent references to HughesNet as “North America’s #1 high-speed satellite Internet service,” the truth comes out.

It cites “up to 1000 Kbps” (maybe that sounds faster than 1 Mbps), and then acknowledges that “during peak times the speed can be 650 Kbps to 750 Kbps.” Of course, there’s an option to upgrade to “HughesNet Elite” which ratchets speeds up to 2.0 Mbps (but 1500 Kbps during peak times). Those fine-print details are far less visible than the header on the HughesNet home page: “15x faster than before,” which merely acknowledges the previous slow satellite access performance. It’s a good sales pitch, but barely competitive with wired options. (Yes, I know: urban dwellers have more and better options.) EchoStar’s continuing assault on cable is hardly astounding. This clever infographic is a timely reminder about the ways in which Web marketing makes it possible – easy – to distract and even deceive while appearing to be informative.