In the early 1990s, four large American cable companies founded PrimeStar, a direct broadcasting company using medium power satellites. The relatively strong Ku band transmissions allowed the use of dishes as small as 90 cm for the first time. On 4 March 1996, EchoStar introduced Digital Sky Highway (Dish Network). This was the first widely used direct-broadcast satellite television system and allowed dishes as small as 20 inches to be used. This great decrease of dish size also allowed satellite dishes to be installed on vehicles. Dishes this size are still in use today. Television stations, however, still prefer to transmit their signals on the C-band analog with large dishes due to the fact that C-band signals are less prone to rain fade than Ku band signals.