In a Facebook post Friday, Garmin said it's “devastated by ‘the senseless tragedy that took the life of one of our associates and friends, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, and injured another, Alok Madasani.’” The two Garmin engineers, both 32 and originally from India, were shot Wednesday in a bar near Garmin’s U.S. headquarters in Olathe, Kansas, in what authorities are calling a possible hate crime. Alleged gunman Adam Purinton reportedly told the Garmin engineers to “get out of my country” before shooting the men, along with Ian Grillot, who was injured when he intervened, reported The Kansas City Star. It said Purinton was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Kuchibhotla and with two counts of attempted first-degree murder in the shootings of Madasani and Grillot. Madasani was released from the hospital Thursday.

Anticipating a new broadband mobility offering for some vehicular and maritime applications, Kymeta is asking the FCC International Bureau for a license allowing it to operate up to 5,000 Ku-band vehicle-mounted earth stations and 1,000 Ku-band earth stations on vessels. In a license application Thursday, Kymeta said its KyWay 1 terminal uses its flat panel antenna technology and would be mounted atop vehicles like trains or commercial trucks or on flat surfaces near the highest point of maritime vessels. It said the antennas would work in the 14-14.5 GHz transmit band and the 10.95-11.2 GHz, 11.45-12.2 GHz receive bands.

Any move to give co-primary regulatory status to federal government earth stations communicating with commercial satellites should make clear they're subject to the same procedural, coordination and technical rules as commercial licensees, the Satellite Industry Association said in a series of meetings with FCC eighth-floor staffers. In ex parte filings posted Tuesday in docket 13-115, SIA recapped meetings with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and to Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Mignon Clyburn (see here, here and here) at which it said any action on NTIA's urging the FCC move on its 2013 space policy rulemaking (see 1610040019) needs to include language in the U.S. table of frequency allocations stating primary federal allocations for fixed satellite service is for earth stations only. SIA said the FCC should make clear it has exclusive regulatory jurisdiction over the co-primary allocations and that shared NTIA jurisdiction doesn't apply to processing of earth station applications. EchoStar also urged federal earth station operations be subject to the same requirements as commercial earth stations and that the FCC reject NTIA-proposed exemptions (see 1610140055). Representatives from SIA, SpaceX, O3b, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and EchoStar attended the meetings.

The deadline for comments for the next Open-Market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (Orbit) Act Report is March 23, replies April 7, the FCC International Bureau said in a public notice Tuesday in docket 17-50. The bureau said it's required by the Orbit Act to report annually to the House Commerce and International Relations committees and the Senate Commerce and Foreign Relations committees. Chairman Ajit Pai said the requirement of annually reporting on the privatization status of Inmarsat and Intelsat is pointless since the two former intergovernmental satellite organizations long have been privatized (see 1506100062).

The forthcoming spectrum frontiers FCC public notice on implementation of the 2016 order would be a good place to tackle numerous questions about how the rules are to be implemented, ViaSat Associate General Counsel-Regulatory Affairs Chris Murphy told Chairman Ajit Pai aide Rachel Bender, according to an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 14-177. Boeing, in its own filing Friday in the docket on a meeting with Bender, said it also discussed spectrum frontiers and the possibility of V-band spectrum sharing. Boeing representatives at the meeting included Bruce Chesley, vice president-global broadband, and Audrey Allison, senior director-frequency management systems.

With the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals having ruled in an interlocutory appeal in a class-action contract breach complaint on Dish Network dropping Turner and Fox programming in 2014, plaintiffs are asking permission to file an amended complaint that includes claims and allegations in conformity with the 8th Circuit's interpretation. In a motion (in Pacer) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Missouri, plaintiffs said the 8th Circuit ruling (in Pacer) on the lower court's partial grant and partial denial of a Dish motion to dismiss noted they hadn't stated a claim since Dish not crediting the subscribers isn't by itself a breach of good faith and plaintiffs didn't allege the company dropped the programming in bad faith. Plaintiffs said they wanted to amend the claim to allege Dish dropped Turner and Fox programming in bad faith and/or willfully and wantonly breached its customer form agreement. Examples include evading the spirit of the bargain by failing to obtain Fox and Turner programming for which the class members had selected and paid Dish in advance, Dish dishonesty by failing to let subscribers know about the dropped programming, and continuing to market programming packages that included Turner and Fox after the takedown, the plaintiffs said. Dish didn't comment Friday.

AT&T reached tentative agreement with Communications Workers of America in contract talks covering about 280 DirecTV field services employees in Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico and Oregon, AT&T said in a Friday news release. The tentative agreement places employees into an appendix to an existing labor contract, the company said. CWA didn’t comment. Earlier last week, AT&T and the union ratified an agreement for 400 DirecTV technical service center workers in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota and Tennessee, CWA said Tuesday. Bargaining on other AT&T labor contracts continued. AT&T wireless workers in 36 states have threatened to strike (see 1702090054), as have California and Nevada wireline workers (see 1612190050). An AT&T spokesman said the company resolved a separate dispute with Sacramento-based DirecTV workers who walked off the job after one was terminated (see 1702010027).

Combining the Planet Labs and Terra Bella Technologies satellite networks will let Planet Labs better compete with other satellite imagery and data providers already in operation or expected to be operational soon, it said in a pair of International Bureau transfer of control applications (see here and here) Wednesday as it seeks to buy Google subsidiary Terra Bella. Terra Bella operates the seven-satellite SkySat constellation of imaging satellites and holds one FCC earth station and one satellite license that need to transfer to Planet Labs, it said. Terra Bella holds another earth station license, and the bureau has a pending application before it to assign that license to Kongsberg Satellite Services, Planet Labs said.

SES and Gilat jointly will offer a maritime connectivity platform for small ships as part of SES' Maritime+ service introduced in 2016. In a news release Wednesday, the two said the service's commercial launch will be in April and it uses Gilat's MarineRay 60P Ku-band maritime very small aperture terminal antenna package with SES’ satellite capacity. They said the service will be available first to small yachts and vessels in the Caribbean, followed by the Mediterranean, North Sea and waters throughout Southeast Asia.

Hughes Network Systems said the FCC shouldn't widely differentiate the bid weights assigned to broadband performance tiers or heavily penalize high-latency services in the planned Connect America Fund Phase II reverse auction for subsidizing fixed broadband/voice services. Satellite provider pricing data show "if the bidding increment per tier is greater than 10%, and if the penalty for high-latency bids is greater than 10%, satellite providers will not be able to compete, even in the highest-cost areas," Hughes said in a filing Tuesday in docket 10-90. Noting it opposed a fiber provider proposal to attach "excessive weights to fiber-based bids in the Gigabit bidder tier," Hughes said the commission should adopt a bid weighting system that provides a maximum 10 percent credit for 25/3 Mbps service, 20 percent credit for 100/20 Mbps service and 25 percent credit for gigabit service. It said the proposal is consistent with several others in the record and with FCC-stated CAF objectives to allocate support in a way “that is technology-neutral and that balances the objectives of maximizing the number of consumers that will be served with the value of higher speeds, higher usage allowances, and lower latency."