The Ciel II communications satellite will be providing high definition television services into the North American market; the anchor customer is DISH Network Corporation.

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The new satellite television company will take on Sky, owned largely by the Mexican media giant Televisa.

Sky has had little competition from other satellite-television providers since DirecTV Group Inc. pulled out of Mexico four years ago. DirecTV Group Inc. now owns 41 percent of Sky Mexico.

Douglas County-based EchoStar says the new company will allow it to enter the Mexican market.

Dish will launch first in the cities of Puebla and Leon. It will then be expanded across Mexico in the next few months.

Sky has 1.7 million subscribers, mostly in Mexico. About 87,000 people receive the service in Central America and the Dominican Republic.

Frontier, formerly known as Citizens Communications, is the country's second- largest rural telco, with 2.3 million phone lines.

Dish, struggling to add subscribers, recently lost a similar partnership with AT&T, making the Frontier deal all the more critical.

Dish Network now offers local channels in 84 markets reaching 76% of U.S. TV households, the satellite provider said Thursday.

The company also announced that it will begin transmitting in MPEG-4 delivery system to consumers in nine additional markets in the eastern half of the United States. Now, consumers who sign up for Dish Network in 61 markets will receive all standard and HDTV programming in the MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding Standard. In August, Dish Network became the first pay-TV provider to offer all-MPEG-4 service.

Englewood-based Dish Network is running an Obama Channel on the satellite network's channel 73. In addition, DishNet subscribers watching other channels see an on-screen option to duck out of commercials in order to select the Obama Channel.

The channel purchase by the Barack Obama campaign is among the most unusual media buys of any presidential campaign.

According to a statement from the satellite company, "DISH Network Channel 73 is paid advertising by the Obama campaign and is not an endorsement of Senator Obama by DISH Network. DISH Network made the same offer to the McCain campaign, an offer that remains open."

The offers were made simultaneously, a spokesman said. The channel will remain up through Nov. 4.

The Obama channel is running the candidate's two-minute economic ad, "Barack Obama's Plan for America," another ad, and the video that was shown at Invesco Field at Mile High before the Democratic nominee's acceptance speech.

DishNet said it charged "no more than what we charge a commercial advertiser" to lease an infomercial channel. All the financial particulars will "be available in our FCC public file."

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