Satellite TV company Dish Network Corp. is launching a broadband Internet service that’s aimed at rural areas that don’t currently get high-speed Internet.
Dish Network said Thursday that the satellite broadband service, dishNet, will start at $40 per month for people who bundle it with certain Dish’s TV programming packages. The new service goes on sale Monday.
The company is targeting about 14.5 million Americans who, according to a Federal Communications Commission report, live in rural areas and don’t have access to high-speed Internet. In all, about 19 million people in the U.S. don’t have high-speed Internet service.
The dishNet service will offer download speeds of up to 10 megabytes per second. Dish said this is fast enough for typical Internet uses such as accessing social networks, music or video streaming and Internet telephone services.
The $40 per month service will offer download speeds of 5 megabytes per second. The faster service will cost $50 per month on top of a Dish TV account. Standalone Internet service without Dish TV will cost $10 more.
This service is available in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
Shares of Englewood, Colo.-based Dish rose 29 cents to $30.70 in morning trading Thursday. Its shares are down 14 percent from their 52-week high of $35.64 in mid-March.
