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2000 Consumer Electronics Show READ ALL ABOUT IT! PAGE 4 FCC Commissioner Calls for Spectrum Cooperation The growing number of telecommunications services, particularly in the wireless market, are great for consumers, FCC Commissioner Susan Ness said, but they are making the FCC’s job of managing spectrum more difficult. The FCC has done an excellent job in recent years of opening up new spectrum bands for new services, she said, and at the same time creating flexible rules that allow businesses to adapt to an ever-changing market. Ness also credited the consumer electronics industry for doing its part to capitalize on the spectrum allocations by rolling out things such as DBS and cellular products. However, “We face an increasingly difficult task of finding all of the spectrum your industry needs,” she said. As more companies come to the FCC looking for spectrum to offer services like wireless internet, it is going to be increasingly important for competing interests to work together on issues such as spectrum sharing and interference. “If high-speed wireless Internet access is to become as widely available as cellular telephones, DBS satellite dishes, or the telephone, we need to work together to find spectrally efficient ways to provide that service,” Ness said. Satellite Industry News Briefs DirecTv plans Jan. 31 to change the names of its Total Choice Silver and Total Choice Gold programming packages to Total Choice Movies and Total Choice Sports, respectively...EchoStar Communications added Showtime Beyond and Showtime 3 to its Showtime Unlimited premium movie package, which retails for $10.99 per month. EchoStar also plans to add the Movie Channel 2 this spring. The company also expects this spring to offer western feeds of the Movie Channel and the Movie Channel 2 as part of a new programming package, tentatively called America’s Top 150...Sirius Satellite Radio announced an agreement to carry CNBC as part of its planned 100 channel lineup of music, sports, and news programming. BACK TO PAGE 1 OTHER ISSUES: Thursday, Jan. 7, 1999 Friday, Jan. 8, 1999 Sunday, Jan. 10, 1999   Please direct questions about this site to general.mail@satbiznews.com q 2000 Satellite Business News Inc. All rights reserved.