Reply #57: They started out with radically different technologies....

[AntiFascist]

including the orbiting of the satellites: Sirius uses a "figure 8" pattern of several satellites simultaneously, while XM uses fixed satellites. I can understand why the companies started out with vertical strategies because they may have feared or hoped that one or the other would not be successful. Now that both companies have survived, there's no reason why they still cannot collaborate on technologies while continuing to keep the marketing of the content completely separate and competetive. It seems to me that this strategy would also be the most profitable for investors over time as the market grows.

My feeling is that there is political pressure to combine content under one organization in order to marginalize the more liberal market of Sirius, and/or to make it easier to censor or filter the content via a new, single corporate hierarchy.