■ Hughes Honored with Industry Innovation Award: During its 2006 conference and exhibition in San Diego, CA, ISCe honored Hughes with its “Innovation Award” for the company’s outstanding accomplishments in bringing satellite services and products to enterprises, governments, small businesses, and consumers globally. “ISCe is one of the satellite industry’s top promotional organizations and we are honored to be this year’s recipient of its prestigious Innovation Award,” said Hughes chairman and CEO Pradman Kaul. ISCe is the premier U.S. West Coast annual conference and expo highlighting satellite-based services, applications, and innovative technologies for the commercial, civil, and military sectors.
■ Good Ideas: Connecting Education and Technology: For over 10 years, Hughes has enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the University of Maryland. In fact, in 1994, a research collaboration through the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPs) program resulted in a joint patent for efficient transmission of IP traffic to and from a Ku-band satellite, paving the way for Internet access over satellite.
As part of the relationship, Hughes has provided the University of Maryland with grants, scholarship funds, graduate field project support, athletic sponsorships, donations of surplus engineering equipment, and numerous VSAT systems. John Kenyon, senior vice president of engineering for Hughes, fills several university leadership roles, including that of honorary fellow of the Robert H. Smith School of Business, chairman of the Board of Advisors for the HYNET (Hybrid and Satellite Networks) Center of the Clark School of Engineering, and member of the Board of Visitors for the Computer, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences college. And since 1995, Hughes has recruited over 400 students from the University of Maryland to join its team of innovative engineers and business people.
■ One Million VSATs: In May, Hughes announced that it had shipped its one millionth satellite terminal earlier this year, marking a major milestone in the global very small aperture terminal (VSAT) industry, which Hughes pioneered in the mid-1980s when it shipped the first VSATs to Wal-Mart. Customers of HughesNet solutions and services include many of the world’s leading companies, spanning a wide range of vertical sectors from retail to oil and gas, automotive, banking, and entertainment, as well as government and global organizations. Today, over 300,000 consumer and small business subscribers throughout the U.S. enjoy the benefits of HughesNet high-speed satellite Internet access.
■ Bridging Communication Gaps at CommunicAsia 2006: In June, Hughes announced its new HX platform for high-QoS, smaller networks and presented its family of HN7000S broadband satellite routers at CommunicAsia 2006 in Singapore. Dave Rehbehn, senior director of marketing at Hughes, presented “Bridging Communication Gaps with Satellite,” a conference session that explored the expanding role of satellite access to unify broadband IP services by filling the broadband “holes” where terrestrial services cannot go. In addition, Hughes exhibited a full range of products at its exhibit stand and hosted a breakfast seminar for approximately 55 service provider customers in the Asia/Pacific region.