dish

People who've received unwanted sales calls from Dish Network may yet get some satisfaction.

The company is the target of a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission alleging that it made sales calls to millions of consumers even though they had asked not to be called again.

The calls reportedly violated the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule. According to that rule, a telemarketer cannot call someone who has asked to be taken off the company's call list, even if the person is not registered with the National Do Not Call list.

The FTC's lawsuit alleges that Dish … Read more

Dish Network is reportedly preparing to roll out a nationwide satellite-based broadband service this fall, ramping up competition with cable companies.

While Dish already offers satellite broadband to select areas as part of a partnership with communications company ViaSat, the new service would utilize a satellite recently launched by Dish sister company EchoStar, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg.

The satellite, which was launched last month, can support download speeds of 15 megabits per second and can handle about 2 million new Internet customers, the sources told Bloomberg. However, speeds may be limited to 5 megabits per second to … Read more

Friday's top tech stories teach us that Web giants may die, but ice cream is forever:

What's left of the social news aggregator Digg has been purchased by Betaworks, a company that runs Bit.ly and several other Web businesses. Digg will be folded into News.me, a daily news app and e-mail digest. Digg has been struggling and was slowly disassembled. A subsidiary of Washington Post bought some of the Digg talent, LinkedIn grabbed some patents, and on Thursday, Betaworks acquired what was left. The Wall Street Journal has sources saying Betaworks acquired Digg for around $500,… Read more

AMC has some good news for Dish subscribers who are fans of "Breaking Bad."

The TV network, which was dropped by the satellite TV provider last month, announced today it will live-stream Sunday's much-anticipated premiere of season five of the drug-dealing drama to Dish customers for free.

"Every cable, phone and satellite company other than Dish carries AMC and its popular programming, including 'Breaking Bad,' 'The Walking Dead' and 'Mad Men,' in their basic package," AMC said in a statement. "AMC wants its loyal Dish viewers to experience the excitement of the 'Breaking Bad' … Read more

AT&T is looking to put some of its unused spectrum to work in a move that could reshuffle the wireless spectrum deck.

On Friday, the carrier filed a joint proposal to the Federal Communications Commission with satellite radio provider Sirius. In the filing, the two companies proposed a solution to some longstanding interference concerns between AT&T's unused WCS spectrum, which is in the 2.3 GHz band and Sirius's satellite radio service. As part of this new proposal, AT&T agreed to give up about 10MHz of this Wireless Communication Services or WCS … Read more

Like rival Dish, DirecTV has access to technology that could allow millions of subscribers to automatically skip TV commercials, but executives don't see much reason to offer it to consumers.

Mike White, CEO of largest satellite provider in the U.S., said at a media conference today that DirecTV bought the technology five years ago from a company called Replay TV but has not seen a reason to offer it to consumers, according to a Reuters account.

"We haven't chosen to use it," White said at the Reuters Global Media and Technology Summit in New York. &… Read more

Dish's new ad-skipping feature has aroused anger among TV broadcasters, but the company's chairman sees it as a wake-up call to the industry.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen defended Ad Hop, the new feature that lets Dish viewers skip advertisements.

Cheap Web-based TV is a threat to pay TV, believes Ergen, a trend created in part by the networks themselves because of their failure to develop ads better targeted toward viewers. Ergen is hoping Ad Hop will convince TV networks to create "more meaningful" ads that people won'… Read more

Now that Evernote Food is on Android, you can join your iOS friends in taking pictures of your meals, the restaurants where you eat them, and the people you are with, and saving it all on your Evernote account.

To get started with Evernote Food, you first have to log in with your Evernote account. If you don't have one, it's free and works across all of Evernote's products. Next, hit the "+" button up top to pull up the New Meal screen, where you can add pictures (as many as you like), captions, tags, location (… Read more

In today's show, we're putting filters on Facebook, paying with our phones and watching the networks get hoppin' mad:

A battle is brewing in court between the major television networks and Dish Network's commercial-skipping Hopper DVR. The fight centers around a feature in the Hopper DVR called Auto Hop, which lets users instantly skip commercials for a show recorded the day prior from a major network during prime time. (No need for a fast-forward button!) Fox, NBC and CBS are suing Dish, arguing that commercial skipping violates copyright. And Fox added another layer to it, saying that … Read more