Iridium relies on "more invective than fact" in its latest filing in the back-and-forth between it and Ligado over possible Ligado broadband terrestrial network interference to Iridium's mobile satellite service (MSS), Ligado said in a statement Tuesday. Iridium, in a docket 11-109 filing Monday, said Ligado's attacks (see 1701170053) on Iridium's claims of a significant interference risk (see 1612140061) said it used methodologies "widely endorsed by industry and the FCC," while Ligado is misusing FCC ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) rules to try to dodge its obligations to protect MSS providers. Spectrum management principles and FCC rules make clear Ligado must mitigate any ATC interference to MSS operations, Iridium said. It said its analysis shows it's not viable to have terrestrial and satellite services in adjacent spectrum, with potential growth of either coming at the cost of the other, and without an agreement from Ligado to modify its ATC proposal to avoid interfering with Iridium in the adjacent band, the FCC should deny Ligado's ask to convert its 1627.5-1637.5 MHz operations to a terrestrial wireless broadband service. Ligado in its statement said the filing "ignores the substantial compromise that Ligado has put on the table, and suggests that this is more about competitive advantage than spectrum policy. Given that Iridium has twice said it 'does not oppose Ligado’s plans' and other proceedings have successfully shown that satellite and terrestrial can coexist in close proximity, it’s unfortunate that Iridium is not spending its resources discussing those solutions when they are so clearly present."

New York state’s broadband subsidy auction may be “inconsistent with FCC requirements,” Hughes warned Monday in docket 10-90. In an ex-parte letter to the FCC posted Tuesday, Hughes urged the FCC to ask New York to modify the plan the state outlined last week for the auction that's receiving up to $170.4 million in federal Connect America Fund support (see 1703230027). The proposal advantages high-speed, low-latency bids, and discredits the high speeds that can be provided by high-latency providers like satellite companies, Hughes said. “This inflexibility against recognizing satellite providers’ actual offered speeds creates an unfair disadvantage against them by effectively denying them access to the 50% bidding credit available to bidders in the Baseline speed tier in which they otherwise could bid.”

Rather than the earth station siting rules adopted in the spectrum frontiers order, the FCC should look at other percent population coverage limits for fixed satellite service (FSS) receivers in the 28 and 39 GHz bands, satellite operators told the eighth floor. In an ex parte filing Tuesday in docket 14-177, the satellite interests said a 0.2 percent population coverage limit in densely populated areas, a fixed population limit in low- and medium-density areas, a 5 percent population coverage limit in the 39 GHz band and 10 percent limit in the 28 GHz band in the most sparely populated areas would encourage earth station siting in areas of low value to upper microwave flexible use system (UMFUS) operators while still "provid[ing] realistic opportunities" for earth station deployment in low-density pockets of high population license areas. They also pushed for better definition of transient population limits and axing rules limiting FSS operators to three earth stations per county for 28 GHz or per partial economic area for 39 GHz. They said using the 70/80/90 GHz band data base for UMFUS facilities would create an easy way for FSS operators to find areas of minimal UMFUS deployment. The filing recapped a meeting between an aide to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly and EchoStar Senior Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Jennifer Manner, Inmarsat Director-Regulatory Giselle Creeser, SES Senior Legal and Regulatory Counsel Petra Vorwig, O3b regulatory counsel William Lewis, Intelsat Associate General Counsel Susan Crandall and Boeing outside counsel Bruce Olcott of Jones Day.

Hytera agreed to pay $62 million cash to acquire Norsat, a Canadian satellite company, Hytera said in a Monday news release. The deal is subject to customary conditions including shareholder and regulatory approval.

Hearst Television said a blackout of its stations on Dish Network may not end soon, among answers to FAQs it released Monday to viewers on its stations' websites. Dish saying the retransmission consent spat may end shortly is false, Hearst said. "Unfortunately, we can’t predict how long this impasse will last. In the past several years, DISH has had numerous outages that have lasted for months." Hearst said it "won't point fingers" after Dish said the TV-station owner is at fault, but "have you ever asked yourself why DISH seems to experience more blackouts and outages than other pay-TV distributors?" A Dish spokesman referred us to the company's previous letter to Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. (see 1703200043) that said the interruption could end now if Hearst took the company's offer to take the same deal as DirecTV. Separately, AT&T's DirecTV ended a carriage dispute with Raycom (see 1703270017).

Driving “overall development” of Ultra HD delivery solutions for Fios subscribers in the U.S. is the aim of a “collaborative agreement” SES signed with Verizon, the satellite company said in a Monday announcement. It will supply Verizon with content to test from its “pre-packaged Ultra HD platform, which combines a growing lineup of Ultra HD channels and reception equipment in a cost-effective service delivered over scalable satellite capacity,” SES said. Since that platform is delivered “over dedicated satellite bandwidth,” it provides “a much higher quality viewer experience” compared with internet-streamed 4K offerings, “which can be susceptible to bottlenecks, buffering and network congestion,” SES said. “Home to nine linear Ultra HD channels, the platform provides the largest bouquet of Ultra HD programming available in North America.”

Established players in the land mobile via satellite market likely won't get major competition from low earth orbit (LEO) high-throughput satellite (HTS) broadband constellations until cheaper, smaller terminals are available, perhaps with electronically steered automatic pointing, said Northern Sky Research analyst Claude Rousseau in an NSR blog post Friday. That LEO HTS competition, however, will force those established players into more alliances and to widen their offerings, NSR said, citing Globalstar and Inmarsat announcing plans to cross-sell their products and services and OneWeb planning to combine with Intelsat.

Citing broad support for letting U.S. devices receive Galileo signals (see 1702220042), T-Mobile, Deere and Trimble are pushing for FCC approval. Meanwhile, the European Commission said it's working with Inmarsat to address the company's interference concerns. Thursday was the deadline for replies in docket 17-16 on the EC request. Instead of giving the EC a waiver, the FCC should decide the rules that require licensing of earth stations receiving signals from foreign satellites don't apply to mobile wireless user devices, T-Mobile wrote. Those rules, when adopted, were aimed at licensing of fixed services, and mobile wireless devices aren't what the FCC was contemplating then, it said, saying any protection of Galileo signals should mirror the protections given GPS. Deere and Trimble said the FCC should reject concerns about adjacent-band interference, since Galileo has transmitted in the 1559-1591 MHz band since 2006 without any reports of interference to systems operating below 1559 MHz. They said the waiver would boost positioning, timing and navigation service accuracy and dependability since Galileo could back up GPS. Inmarsat will do measurements to better assess how the Galileo system might affect its service, with the company and EC having agreed that if there's demonstrable harm to Inmarsat service the two parties will coordinate bilaterally to minimize the effects, the EC and Inmarsat wrote.

Alaska Airlines is moving to satellite broadband for its cabins, with plans to begin retrofitting all its Boeings starting in fall 2018, with Airbus retrofits to follow, it said in a blog post Wednesday. It said both fleets will be satellite equipped by the end of 2019. The airline -- which bought Virgin America last year -- is retiring that brand in 2019.

The satellite industry's years of big growth of direct-to-home (DTH) and video distribution are over, but linear TV "will remain the bread and butter" of the fixed satellite service industry for years, said Northern Sky Research analyst Alan Crisp in a blog post Wednesday. NSR said major markets such as the U.S., India and parts of Western Europe are either saturated or stagnating, but growth opportunities remain for enhanced content quality and ethnic programming, and developing regions will see growth for some time of DTH and video distribution. The firm said the number of leased Ku-band DTH channels in developing markets will grow by roughly 50 percent, to more than 12,000 by 2026, while over-the-top video and the general maturity of the North America/Western European markets mean channel growth in the time frame there will be a more modest 10 percent, to roughly 4,100 channels.