■ Hughes Joins Ranks of U.S. ISPs: According to ISP Market Research, broadband subscriber growth in the U.S. rebounded in the third quarter of 2005 after a slow second quarter. The publisher ranked Hughes as the 19th largest Internet service provider in the U.S.

■ Hughes Welcomes Grant Barber as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer: Grant Barber was appointed executive vice president and chief financial officer of Hughes in January 2006. Before joining Hughes, Barber held the position of executive vice president and CFO of Acterna, a global manufacturer of telecommunications test and measurement equipment. Prior to that, Barber had an 18-year career with Nortel Networks in various financial management positions.

■ Favorite Gadgets: Kurt Woetzel, CIO of the Bank of New York, says HughesNet Internet over Satellite service using the DW7000 is his favorite gadget. “It’s the only way I can get to the Internet at broadband speed given the remote location of my mountain home,” said Woetzel. From Forbes.com

■ 2000 VSATS Installed… 2000 Reasons to Celebrate: In December, Hughes Americas reached an important milestone in its two-year history—the deployment of its 2,000th VSAT in South America. Employees in the Brazil office marked the occasion with a breakfast celebration. “We are very excited to have reached this milestone, which demonstrates our strong and growing position in South America,” said Delio Morais, president of Hughes Americas. “We look forward to growing our enterprise markets, bringing broadband satellite communications to even more customers in the years ahead.”

■ DataSat Takes VSAT Award in Kiev: At a press conference on December 7, 2005 in Kiev, Simon Bull, senior consultant at COMSYS, awarded DataSat with a market leadership award as the “Fastest Growing VSAT Service Provider in Ukraine, Russia, and the CIS Countries.” Alexander Danchenko, director of DataSat and general director of the DataGroup, accepted the award. DataSat is the largest HughesNet authorized service provider in the region, with three network centers and over 3,000 installed sites.