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Originally posted by DonB:
I am not aware of any. iDirect usually just falls into the background noise of "other" services at places like BroadBandReports.com and such.

That was true here as well until relatively recently.

An anecdote that is somewhat applicable: A few years ago I had a series of e-mail exchanges with a sales manager for C-ComSat, the maker of the iNetVu dish which is the oldest similar-market competitor to the Datastorm. He was throwing a lot of PR stuff at me, and I kept saying "I don't care about PR, get some actual users to come into the forums and post!"

He eventually gave up with this comment: "Our customers are enterprise users and don't have time to post in forums."

I recounted that as humorous at the time, but there's a certain amount of truth to it; not that enterprise customers don't have the time to spend in forums, but rather that they don't have the inclination to do so the way the avid consumer/hobbyist type does.

By and large, iDirect has been an enterprise/government platform. Not the sort of user that spends time talking about their dish and service in forums. The difference now is that there are service plans and hardware that are a logical step up from the highest consumer Hughes plans, and you have individuals buying them and putting it on private RVs. Those types will include a percentage who are forum posters, and we are reacting to that with this forum.

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Lotta truth in that. You pretty much defined me. I am just rooting around trying to gain additional background info for trend analysis. If I can apply just one thing that I pick up in the forums to my job as a IP Satcom Engineer, it was worth my time

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Mike

Posts: 567 | From: North Carolina | Registered: May 2007  |  IP: Logged |