Digital satellite television provider EchoStar today announced that by next year, 1.8 million of its U.S. customers will have access to interactive services as a result of a deal today with software provider OpenTV.

By the summer of 1999, EchoStar's DISH Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) network will offer an electronic programming guide, e-mail, Internet access, as well as some enhanced television services, the company said. EchoStar offers a high-speed digital data stream into, but not out of the home, unlike set-top boxes from WebTV which purport to offer a more PC-like experience, albeit by using a dial-up modem to send and receive data from the Internet.

Email and other truly interactive services requiring two-way communications will be made possible in the EchoStar set-top receiver by ending data out via a modem connection, said Clay Conrad, vice president of global sales and business development for OpenTV. OpenTV is "one of the two leading solutions in Europe," for providing interactive DBS services, according to Sean Kaldor, an analyst at IDC. The company was conceived as a joint alliance between Thomson and Sun Microsystems, developer of the Java programming language,

and took its current name after a third party invested in the company.

http://www.echostar.com/