US media company Cablevision has sold the Rainbow 1 bird, which carried channels for its Voom satellite service, to EchoStar for $200m.

EchoStar will likely use Rainbow 1 and its frequency rights to offer more services on its own Dish Network service.

"It gives us flexibility and additional capacity," said EchoStar spokesperson Steve Caulk. "We have a lot of services that we would like to offer our customers and services that we offer that we would like to enhance, so we have a lot to look at."