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Los Angeles
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01-02/2014 —
TELE-audiovision International —
全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志
A look in the enormous TTM warehouse.
The palettes in the foreground are loaded
with satellite dishes for DISH. Further back
are palettes full of antenna masts, LNBs
and satellite receivers. From here TTM
delivers to DISH's warehouses.
es, LNBs, etc. from? And how did DISH
organize this?
First of all, DISH outsourced the tech-
nical side of the company to ECHOS-
TAR. They deal with all of the hardware
which includes everything from the sat-
ellites in orbit, that are used not only
for DISH programming but are leased
out to other customers as well, all the
way to the reception equipment for
DISH‘s subscribers. The satellite recep-
tion systems are stored in a large ware-
house near Denver, Colorado ready for
delivery to DISH’s own installers or to
their authorized contractors. But what
takes place before these products even
reach DISH‘s distribution warehouse?
And who is responsible for the procure-
ment and manufacturing of these re-
ception systems?
One of the companies in the back-
ground that manages and organizes
all of this is TigerTech. They are re-
sponsible for product procurement for
DISH’s customers in the western por-
tion of the USA. TigerTech stores all the
products in four very large warehouses.
The products are sent from here to all
the DISH installers. If DISH plans any
marketing action or technical changes,
TigerTech organizes the preparation
of the products. In this way TigerTech
acts both as a producer and as a con-
tractor to third-party companies as
well as a logistics specialist.
TigerTech was founded - it should
come as no surprise - by „Tiger“. That
is the nickname of the founder who was
born in Taiwan; his parents came from
Shanghai. Tiger came to San Francisco
as a student and quickly began set-
ting up businesses. Today he lives in
Shanghai where his parents came from
and it’s from there where he runs his
business empire which in the meantime
has grown very large. Shanghai is also
the location where some of DISH’s sat-
ellite receivers are manufactured. On
the other hand, the satellite dishes and
LNBs are made in Taiwan.
These products are stored in large
quantities in four warehouses in west-
ern USA. The main warehouse is locat-
ed coincidentally enough near DISH’s
headquarters outside of Denver, addi-
tional warehouses are located in Houn-
sville, Sacramento and in La Verne in
Los Angeles right across from the Fair-
plex Race Tracks. And it’s this ware-
house that we here at TELE-audiovision
got a closer look at and for good rea-
son: this is where the hub for a large
number of Asian TV channels can be
found. It’s these channels that DISH
incorporates into their international
programming packages.
These channels used to find their way
from Asia to the USA via satellite feeds.
Those days are over; today fiber-optic
cables laid across the ocean floor are
used to transport these channels from
one continent to another. In DISH’s
case it works like this: all the fiber-op-
tic lines from the various Asia-Pacific
telecommunications companies land in
Los Angeles in one single building: One
Wilshire located at 624 South Grand in
Los Angeles. Here every company op-
erates a cage in which their own fiber-
optic lines end up. From these cages
the links with the fiber-optic lines of
those companies that will further dis-
tribute these channels takes place.
TigerTech operates one of these cag-
es where it collects the lines from the
TV channels out of Asia - currently al-
most 50 TV channels. Some of these
channels are routed live to DISH who
then redistributes these channels to
