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WildBlue Appoints New President and COO

Denver, Colo./November 25, 2003/Satnews/ Wireless broadband company WildBlue Communications, Inc., announced today the appointment of Ken Carroll to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer.  Approved by the company's Board of Directors, Mr. Carroll will be  responsible for establishing the company's operational and sales structures in preparation for WildBlue's service launch next year.  The company has plans to deliver a two-way wireless broadband service via satellite, direct to homes and small offices throughout the contiguous United States, beginning in the second half of 2004.

Mr. Carroll joins WildBlue from his position as President and Chief Financial Officer at Liberty Satellite & Technology, Inc., where he spent 4 years managing the operations and finances of the satellite company. Mr. Carroll previously served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of PRIMESTAR, Inc., a satellite TV service purchased by DirecTV in 2000.  Mr. Carroll had been a member of WildBlue's Board of Directors prior to his appointment as President.

WildBlue is expected to be the first to launch a commercial service using the Ka-band spot beam satellite technology designed to lower the cost of providing consumers high-speed Internet access via satellite.  The WildBlue system will also utilize terrestrial cable modem technology, resulting in lower customer equipment and installation costs -- a critical requirement in satellite-based consumer services.  WildBlue's service is aimed at  the millions of homes and small offices in small cities and rural America that lack access to DSL or cable modem service.

WildBlue has also announced several key hires. Jim Elliot has been hired as Vice President of Infrastructure, responsible for meeting WildBlue's system procurement and implementation goals through contractual and technical management of the space segment, ground segment gateways and customer premise equipment.  In addition, Mr. Elliot is responsible for WildBlue's import/export compliance.  Mr. Elliot comes to WildBlue from Ball Aerospace's Commercial Space Operations business unit. Prior to that, Mr. Elliot was a Program Manager with Lockheed Martin for 12 years, covering 11 Atlas commercial launch missions.

Thad Mazurczyk has been hired as Vice President of Engineering, responsible for all engineering functions at WildBlue.  Mr. Mazurczyk was previously Senior Vice President of Technology for High Speed Access Corp. Mr. Mazurczyk also spent more than nine years as the Vice President of Engineering at PRIMESTAR.

WildBlue has hired Randy Thompson as Vice President of Space Systems, responsible for WildBlue's satellites, satellite launch services and satellite management systems.  Mr. Thompson comes to WildBlue from Liberty Satellite, where he held the position of Vice President of Advanced Technology.  Prior to this position, Mr. Thompson spent 17 years working for Raytheon Corporation (formerly Hughes Aircraft Company).

Also joining WildBlue are Patrick Bailey as Director of Information Technology, Joe Ducey as Gateway Director and Lisa Gillenwaters as Director of Operations Analysis.

Denver-based WildBlue Communications, Inc. was established in 1997 to accelerate consumer broadband access to the Internet in smaller cities and throughout rural America. Some of the partners in the venture include satellite companies  Liberty Media, IntelSat and Arianespace who have invested  in WildBlue.

 
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