Hughes this afternoon announced that the company will close the doors of DIRECTV Broadband, migrating existing customers to other providers over the next ninety days. According to the release, the company eliminated half of its 400 employees today, but failed to count their many contract workers (who won't be seeing severance packages). We've received multiple e-mails from employees who had no idea anything was wrong until they lost their jobs at 11am PST today (the entire Beaverton, OR call center staff was eliminated).

The move will affect roughly 160,000 customers, and while the company's press release indicates that affected customers should keep their eye on the official website, no additional support information was posted as of this afternoon. Users looking for help from other customers can of course find assistance in our DirecTV forum.