Geocast Joins With EchoStar to Extend Reach

More than doubling its potential reach, Geocast Network Systems Inc. said it will team with EchoStar Communications Corp. to distribute its personalized news and entertainment service to home computers next year.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based Geocast is one of a handful of companies hoping to deliver Internet programming at high speed through airwaves controlled by television broadcasters. The deal with EchoStar will let Geocast send video clips, music, text and graphics each day to subscribers throughout the country, starting in the third quarter of 2001.

Terms of the deal were not announced, although Geocast Chairman Joe Horowitz said his company would share revenue from the service with EchoStar. The second-leading provider of small-dish satellite TV, EchoStar has 4.3 million subscribers for its DISH Network service.

Shares of EchoStar, based in Littleton, Colo., jumped 7.5%, or $2.94, to $42 in Nasdaq trading. Geocast is privately held.

The deal is another example of how TV broadcasters and cable operators are trying to incorporate the Internet into their lineup of services. Those efforts range from storing the most popular Web pages in viewers’ set-top boxes to providing high-speed, two-way access to the Internet.

Geocast plans to blast the same programming to all subscribers in a community, but each user will be able to filter out the material he or she isn’t interested in. The result promised by Geocast will be personalized daily briefings rich in video clips and hi-fi audio, along with games, music and other forms of entertainment that can be played on a computer.

To receive the service, however, subscribers will need a “personal server”--a device with a huge storage capacity that connects to a PC. How much consumers will have to pay for the server and for the Geocast service have yet to be determined.

Subscribers also will need a separate connection to the Internet to send information back to Geocast. But they won’t need to be online when they view the material downloaded via Geocast--it will be coming off their personal servers, avoiding the Internet bottlenecks that can reduce picture and sound quality.

In addition to EchoStar, Geocast has agreements with local TV stations covering about 40% of the country, including those owned by Hearst-Argyle Television Inc. and Belo Corp.