Matt Daneman

With the nominations of businessmen Wilbur Ross as Commerce secretary and Todd Ricketts as deputy secretary, President-elect Donald Trump is building "a cabinet of winners," transition spokesman Jason Miller said Wednesday. Ross is head of investment firm WL Ross & Co. and formerly head of investment bank Rothschild. He was Trump's economic adviser on trade policy. Rickets is co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. They -- along with Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin, who previously was Goldman Sachs chief information officer -- were selected because of their firsthand knowledge of issues like tax codes and trade policies, Miller said. "When we talk about 'the art of the deal,' someone who has made good deals, that's someone like Wilbur Ross," he said. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., said Ross "will bring exceptional real-world business experience to the Department of Commerce as part of an administration that emphasizes job creation and the economy. I ... expect the Senate Commerce Committee will expeditiously consider this nomination once the new Congress begins in January. There will be strong support for keeping a successful entrepreneur at the helm of an agency charged with keeping our nation competitive.” Thune also issued a statement backing Trump's nomination of Elaine Chao -- who was Labor secretary under President George W. Bush and deputy Transportation secretary under President George H.W. Bush -- as Transportation secretary. "Chao has a distinguished record of serving the nation, and has already shown she can work effectively with members on both sides of the aisle," Thune said. "Her leadership will benefit the Department of Transportation in guiding investment in our infrastructure and making transportation safer and better for the public.”

Some opposition to Globalstar broadband terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) plans is falling by the wayside, but at least one critic still has major issues with the company's spectrum plans. And, given the forthcoming change in White House administration, the likelihood the FCC moves on Globalstar's proposal between now and the Trump administration's start could be slim, lawyers representing interested parties and satellite industry sources us.

AT&T buying Time Warner is likely the first in a series of transactions that combine spectrum, networks and scale in video, Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen said Wednesday during the company's Q3 earnings call. "You can imagine all the interesting things that might take place once this current auction is over," Ergen said. "If someone puts all the pieces together, and AT&T is on the path to do that, people on the sidelines have to do something different," he said, adding that Dish lacks the network leg of the stool. Ergen also said that while over-the-top services have huge growth potential, they also carry some business challenges. "OTT in general has the potential to be as big or bigger" than direct broadcast satellite, he said. "It's the next way to watch TV." But the ease of switching providers could create challenges for content providers, he said. A ruling from U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit regarding the designated entity appeal of the FCC decision on AWS-3 bidding credits (see 1601130062) should come sometime in the first half of 2017, Ergen said. There likely will be handsets that use Band 66 -- which includes AWS-3 spectrum -- before there's a network using the spectrum, Dish executives said. They said Qualcomm is shipping Band 66 chipsets, and Intel is likely to follow, while LG's V20 phone also supports the Band 66 configuration. Dish said the expectation is more Android devices will adopt it in 2017, though timing is murkier for iOS. In a note to investors, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet said the company's cash flow statement suggests a broadcast spectrum auction deposit of about $1.5 billion, meaning Dish could end up buying up to 100 MHz of nationwide spectrum. He also said that incumbent telcos have stretched balanced sheets, leaving Dish "as the only way [to] buy significant spectrum for equity."

While required to build fiber to 12.5 million homes by 2019 as one of the conditions of its purchase of DirecTV, that fiber buildout size could be a floor rather than a ceiling, AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said Wednesday during the Wells Fargo investor conference. "We would be willing to do more." Stephens also said DirecTV integration is ahead of schedule regarding cost management. "We kept [revenue generation] expectations tempered," he said. "We thought it would take a year to get things going, and it has." AT&T revenue expectations also have been hampered by a tepid U.S. economy, he said. While the carrier has announced a $35 price point for its upcoming DirecTV Now streaming service (see 1610250053), the company plans to subsequently add features and content that will result in other price points, he said. Stephens also said one aim of DirecTV Now is as an entry point to the market of 20 million or so U.S. households without pay TV, letting AT&T then try to bundle broadband or other services with it.

Iridium's L-band Next satellite constellation could end up integrated into a number of Ka- and Ka-band constellations, providing a backup data route, CEO Matt Desch said Wednesday at a Wells Fargo investor conference. Satellite operators like OneWeb, SES and Intelsat "see us as a complement for them, a potential partner" with integrated networks, Desch said. He said given that OneWeb doesn't provide safety services and its bent pipe configuration means it has only spotty coverage until its entire satellite network is built out, dual-mode Iridium and OneWeb terminals could make sense. OneWeb didn't comment. Desch also said the company expects the first launch of its Next satellite constellation -- delayed by a September explosion during a preflight ignition test (see 1610270015) -- to come in December. After that 10-satellite launch, a second launch of 10 satellites should follow in about 90 days, he said, with the entire constellation in orbit by early 2018. Iridium's existing 800,000-plus subscribers won't notice any transition to the Next constellation, with satellites with longer design lives, more channels and higher waveforms than the current constellation, Desch said. He said the company will focus on such markets as safety services and maritime and aviation connectivity, staying away from the broadband mass market, which will see sizable amounts of capacity becoming available in the next five years. Desch also defended the company against criticisms by L-band rival Inmarsat that Iridium has overstated the data speeds Next could provide, saying such companies as Rockwell and L-3 wouldn't be building terminals for it if there was no market.

The alleged collusion among multichannel video programming distributors that's the focus of a DOJ lawsuit against DirecTV is more commonplace than just the MVPDs' interactions with regional sports network (RSN) SportsNet LA, programmers tell us. No one in the pay-TV industry is shocked by the DOJ complaint calling AT&T-owned DirecTV the ringleader of an information-sharing cabal of MVPDs trying to negotiate with the RSN (see 1611020034), but there is surprise about how the DOJ got the information it cites in its complaint, one independent programmer CEO told us. AT&T, DOJ and NCTA didn't comment.

Charter Communications expects to have a wireless service offering broadly available in its footprint by late next year or early 2018, CEO Tom Rutledge said during the company's Q3 earnings call Thursday. "It is a substantial business and requires significant planning."

With AT&T's planned DirecTV Now service a driver of its buy of Time Warner (see 1610240011), NBCUniversal CEO Stephen Burke questioned the likelihood it and other over-the-top entrants will siphon off significant numbers of traditional pay-TV subscribers. "Most people find tremendous value in their cable or satellite subscription and are not going to change," he said during the cable operator company's Q3 earnings call Wednesday. He also said it's unlikely such services would materially benefit NBCU at least in the first couple of years by delivering major numbers of cord-cutters and cord-nevers. Comcast executives said they wouldn't comment on the AT&T/TW deal itself. CEO Brian Roberts said Comcast is targeting mid-2017 for rolling out a wireless service as part of a multiproduct bundle. For the quarter, revenue was $21.3 billion, up 14.2 percent year over year, and it added 432,000 video customers vs. a 48,000 decline the same quarter a year earlier. The cable ISP said it added 330,000 broadband customers in the quarter, for the company's best Q3 result in seven years. Programming costs were up 11.4 percent in the quarter due to contract renewals, higher retransmission consent fees and sports programing costs. Comcast expects programming cost to be up more than 10 percent this year and similarly higher than normal in 2017, but further out they should increase more along the traditional 7-8 percent a year, Chief Financial Officer Michael Cavanagh said. Comcast closed Wednesday at $62.56, down 3 percent. Roberts was sanguine about the possible threat of streaming cannibalizing NFL and Olympics TV viewership, with the streaming portion of the Rio Olympics being 1 to 2 percent of what TV viewership was. Similar numbers apply to the NFL, he said, saying the ratings drops might reflect that the current NFL season isn't as strong as others. NFL and Olympics coverage is profitable, Roberts said, and the modest ratings decline "doesn't cause us too much discomfort." The company meanwhile just started the launch of its Xi5 all-Wi-Fi set-top box, Roberts said. Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit said the company should be moving to IP-based delivery of content "over the next couple years."

With GPS Adjacent-Band Compatibility (ABC) Assessment L-band testing done, the next step is coming up with tolerable equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) levels to protect GPS from adjacent band interference, the Transportation Department told us Tuesday. Those tolerable EIRP levels will come from radiated test interference tolerance masks, use case scenarios representing relevant applications and services, and propagation modeling, Transportation said. The agency presented its ABC testing results Friday at a workshop and said there are no further plans for testing. That testing comes as Ligado has been trying to get FCC approval for its broadband terrestrial low-power service in spectrum adjacent to GPS and arguing that the proposed power and out-of-band emission levels protect GPS (see 1602250032). Ligado in a statement said it's "glad that DOT's nearly two years of testing is finally over. Now the government agencies with authority over our nation’s spectrum policy, the FCC and the NTIA, can take this information and all the other studies into account and make critical decisions. It is odd that the DOT study did not address at all the actual harm to consumers, as the other studies did. DOT also made clear that it recommends a mask based on the worst device it could find. Others will have to decide whether that is sound policy.” DOT said the reacquisition tests that were part of wired testing showed that for some receivers, there wasn't significant margin beyond the interference power causing 1 dB degradation. The degradation was particularly apparent for lower-power GPS signals, like those that would be associated with operating in challenged environments such as urban canyons or under foliage or with low-elevation satellites in open skies, DOT said. When asked about what its test findings might mean for actual device performance, the agency said the wired testing results "suggest exceeding the 1 dB interference level can adversely affect receiver performance by slowing satellite acquisition times." The department said radiated test results -- which show "the more comprehensive view of adjacent band interference causing a 1 dB degradation" in carrier to noise ratio -- were nonetheless "in good agreement ... when the performance of the active antennas were taken into consideration."

Hammered by criticism from the electronic gaming industry springing from a Microsoft study, Globalstar fired back Friday, saying the Microsoft data are "biased, unreliable and should be accorded no weight." Satellite industry consultant Tim Farrar told us the Globalstar/Microsoft back-and-forth "is a game of he said/she said," with dueling studies being "par for the course" in hotly contested proceedings. Regardless, Farrar said, the likelihood the FCC might act on Globalstar's TLPS application this year looks increasingly slim.