
Amid customer support fiascos and Weather Channel royalty battles from its competitors, Dish Network has continued to distinguish itself as a highly relevant pay-TV option for the 21st century consumer. The perfect example of this is its on-going efforts to merge with the wireless carrier T-mobile.
The endeavor to make a single entity from Dish and T-Mobile will give the former unique positioning within the mobile and broadcast TV arena and give the latter a large amount of wireless spectrum.
Currently, the mobile marketplace consists of many anti-trust watchdogs and complex spectrum laws which stand in the way of any significant changes in the pay-TV arena. Such regulations have favored the oligopolic domination of the Pay-TV industry by a few egotistical bullies. A merger like this would bring a significant and much-needed change to both industries.
Not a relevance power-play
However, the Dish-T-Mobile merger cannot be considered alone. This is a market in which subscription TV providers are becoming the butt of ridicule and vitriol in many circles. In the entire play-out, Dish Network, a satellite TV provider was considered an outlier.
However, the merger does not represent efforts by an irrelevant company to become germane. Au contraire, it is just the next step in a long-established TV service provider to provide relevant value to consumer, just as it always was.
Since 2013, traditional Dish customers could remotely stream almost all live TV channels and content on DVR through their smartphones. In 2012, the company introduced their Hopper DVR, famous for its ability to skip commercials in a move that caused untold disruption and elicited unmatched rage among its competitors.
Dish Sling TV
Dish added to its relevance by introducing Sling TV earlier in the year. Sling TV now stands as the best solution to enable live satellite TV streaming onmany devices. Unlike preceding announcements from competitors which were all hype and no actionable roadmaps to launching, Dish followed its announcement by launching the following month.
Sling TV is a refreshing addition from Dish TV for a number of reasons:The Company stated unequivocally that it was targeting never-before pay TV consumers or consumers who had ditched pay TV for any reason; it was not attempting to convert existing pay TV consumers.
In fact, if there was a consumer considering satellite or cable TV subscription, Dish didn’t make Sling TV for that person. More details on this can be found at http://www.tvproviders.com/dish-network/ .
That such a versatile product would come from an ‘old’ provider is nothing if not proof that Dish TV truly understands what consumers need. 30 years after they have been in the market, it is only recently that companies have finally made provisions for basic things like streaming live TV to mobile devices and on-demand content accessibility.
They spent the better part of those years fighting it, at a disadvantage to none but themselves. Even then, to be able to access these features, you still need the old-school hardware leases and satellite/cable subscriptions that have no place in the 21st century.
Finally, Dish TV provides simple subscription and un-subscription options – as simple as a few clicks. No need to do battle with “retention specialists” or wait out any installation windows. Their daring approach to fighting the status quo is why they are likely to survive long after pay-TV becomes irrelevant for consumers.