ated solely to satellite TV, a satellite receiver with built-in digital video recording and also to provide local channels to local markets in all 50 states. From Colorado to the stars With technology evolving faster and faster with each passing decade, it's easy to forget that not all advances were spawned in the last five years. By 1980, Charlie Ergen was already in tune with the latest in television transmissions as a distributer of C-band TV systems. That year, along with his wife Cantey and friend James DeFranco, he opened EchoSphere for business. The new company started out marketing C-band satellite TV dishes to rural Colorado customers. It filed for a DBS license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1987 and was granted access to a slice of the sky - orbital slot 119 degrees West Longitude - in 1992. Three years later, the company established the DISH Network brand name and, just after Christmas, it launched its first satellite, EchoStar I, from Xichang, China. Within a year, it had already signed up 100,000 subscribers and boasted 1 million a year after that. In 1996, the launch of EchoStar II expanded the network's capacity as the company acquired new orbital slots. EchoStar III went up in October 1997, followed by EchoStar IV in May 1998, EchoStar V in September 1999, and EchoStar VI in July 2000. VAULT CAREER LIBRARY 2005 Vault Inc. Vault Guide to the Top Telecom Employers EchoStar Communications Corp. Nine and counting EchoStar's latest satellite, EchoStar IX, was launched in August 2003. Shot off from a platform floating near the equator, it was the first satellite decked out with commercial Ka-band payload to explore the potential of providing broadband service in America. In mid-June 2003, a white tractor-trailer hauled the satellite, ensconced in an innocuous-looking white box, to the port in Long Beach, Calif., for processing. Nearly a month later, the huge white satellite - twice the size of an elephant and emblazoned with the DISH Network and other logos - was ushered slowly by 