StarBand Shuts Down

Retail telecom markets might not be the “winner take all” markets so typical of the consumer applications business. But retail telecom tends to be an oligopoly, eventually.

So it is that StarBand, which has been providing satellite Internet access for about 15 years, has shut down. In the U.S. market, where Starband had competed, Hughes Network Systems, owned by Echostar, is the market leader with about 54 percent share, according to Comsys.

WildBlue has most of the rest of the market share  as has been true for the past half decade.

StarBand simply was too small to compete, it appears.