Organization and Business Activities

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2012

Organization and Business Activities

Organization and Business Activities

Note 1. Organization and Business Activities

Principal Business

EchoStar Corporation (together with its subsidiaries is referred to as “EchoStar,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” and/or “our”) is a holding company that was organized in October 2007 as a corporation under the laws of the State of Nevada.  Our Class A common stock is publicly traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “SATS.”  We are a global provider of satellite operations, video delivery solutions, and broadband satellite technologies and services for home and office, delivering innovative network technologies, managed services, and solutions for enterprises and governments. We currently operate in three business segments.

· EchoStar Technologies — which designs, develops and distributes digital set-top boxes and related products and technology, primarily for satellite TV service providers, telecommunication and international cable companies and, with respect to Slingboxes, directly to consumers via retail outlets.  Our EchoStar Technologies segment also provides digital broadcast operations including satellite uplinking/downlinking, transmission services, signal processing, conditional access management, and other services primarily to DISH Network Corporation and its subsidiaries (“DISH Network”).

· Hughes — which provides satellite broadband Internet access to North American consumers and broadband network services and systems to the domestic and international enterprise markets.  The Hughes segment also provides managed services to large enterprises and networking systems solutions to customers for mobile satellite and wireless backhaul systems.  Hughes became a new segment as a result of our acquisition of Hughes Communications, Inc. and its subsidiaries (“Hughes Communications”) in June 2011 and our historical financial statements on and after June 9, 2011 give effect to the acquisition of Hughes Communications (the “Hughes Acquisition).  See Note 15 for further discussion of Hughes Acquisition.

· EchoStar Satellite Services — which uses certain of our owned and leased in-orbit satellites and related licenses to lease capacity on a full-time and occasional-use basis primarily to DISH Network, and secondarily to Dish Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. (“Dish Mexico”), a joint venture we entered into in 2008, United States government service providers, state agencies, Internet service providers, broadcast news organizations, programmers, and private enterprise customers.

Effective January 1, 2008, DISH Network completed its distribution to us (the “Spin-off”) of its digital set-top box business and certain infrastructure and other assets, including certain of its satellites, uplink and satellite transmission assets, real estate, and other assets and related liabilities.  Since the Spin-off, we and DISH Network have operated as separate publicly-traded companies, and neither entity has any ownership interest in the other.  However, a substantial majority of the voting power of the shares of both companies is owned beneficially by Charles W. Ergen, our Chairman, or by certain trusts established by Mr. Ergen for the benefit of his family.