Hughes Network Systems LLC introduced last week its new HughesNet brand, replacing Direcway. The new brand unifies the company’s range of broadband solutions and services, going beyond Direcway’s traditional "broadband by satellite" offering, for its enterprise, government, small business and consumer segments.

In essence, HughesNet was created as the new brand for Hughes broadband-related products and services following DirecTV Inc.‘s sale of its stake in Hughes, completed in January. DirecTV retained the Direcway brand formerly used by Hughes for its broadband products when it sold its stake to co-owner Skyterra Communications, which then spun off Hughes into a separate company.

Today, as the executive team at Hughes look to grow their operations, unifying the company’s offerings, focusing on stronger broadband build-out throughout the developing regions and rural North America top the near-term business goals.

"HughesNet leverages all our broadband solutions that include managed network services, digital media and Internet access," said Mike Cook, senior vice president of sales and marketing for the company’s North American division.

Hughes, which now manages more than 110,000 large-business network sites in North America, will focus on offering several service options to enterprise and government customers. In other words, HughesNet Managed Network Services will include the following offerings:

• HughesNet High Availability Networks – an offering that combines the best of satellite and terrestrial broadband technologies to form a single, integrated, fully managed network with two diverse paths for each network location. Depending on network configuration, HughesNet High Availability Networks can be configured to yield an availability of better than four 9s, backed by Service Level Agreements.
• HughesNet Optimized Networks – a fully managed broadband offering that creates a seamless enterprise network by utilizing the most economical broadband technology available at each location. The result is a single, integrated broadband network for enterprises that covers all locations, regardless of geography. Networks can be optimized for price or performance and will support full private networking or IP virtual private network-based configurations.
• HughesNet Access Continuity Services – a cost-effective, satellite-based business continuity solution designed to help enterprises with existing data networks achieve levels of network availability, by providing a diverse transport path at each network location. Enterprises are able to optimize backup cost and capacity depending on the level of network required.

Moving forward, Hughes will focus on growing its established business units, emphasizing network management services for developing and rural geographic areas, which company executives hope will grow its small business segment and consumer services. Likewise, company officials hope that by offering a space and terrestrial bundled solution, a stronger market share will be gained over the competition.

Pradman Kaul, Chairman and CEO of Hughes added that HughesNet will give customers the opportunity to choose service at a more competitive cost than currently available, especially in market segments that terrestrial service providers cannot penetrate on their own. "HughesNet will give us great strength in growing our market share within Europe, Latin America, China and India, as well as expand our base here in North America," he said.

Likewise, officials say they see the company’s future more tightly tied to providing Internet access, Web sites and other services to the estimated 10 million to 15 million households without access to a high-speed broadband connection.

"By bundling terrestrial and satellite offerings, we will be able to truly provide tier one services to underserved consumer markets resulting in a robust broadband network offering that expands our ability to reach even a greater proportion of the enterprise broadband market," Cook said.

Kaul added that current contracts average roughly three to five years in length and Hughes has about 180,000 sites in service. "We have more than 140 large enterprise customers and will be expanding that number with growth within the retail and services markets," Kaul said.

Likewise, Hughes’ pricing structure tends to maintain a competitive advantage with competitors pricing both higher and lower on the equipment and services scale. "In the end, customers pay for quality and even though we are not the cheapest, we have a strong offering that gives customers a solid [return on investment]," Kaul added. For equipment and installation, Hughes prices range from $600 to $2,800 and the monthly service fee per site runs in the neighborhood of $80 to $150.

The company currently has more than 275,000 consumer and small business subscribers, with an average of more than 10,000 new customers signing on each month.

Complete rollout of HughesNet services will happen throughout this year and the newly-named HughesNet division will start off with about 275,000 U.S. customers. Likewise, the company’s Spaceway platform remains on schedule to begin operations in early 2007.