Dish Network has 14 days to reinstate 17 discharged Texas workers to their old jobs or equivalent positions and compensate them for lost earnings and benefits, National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge Robert Ringler ruled Tuesday. The NLRB decision said Dish in April imposed new contractual terms on unionized workers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area after five years of negotiations that effectively cut wages deeply and changed the terms of health coverage, resulting in 17 employees resigning. It said Dish didn't satisfy the burden of proving an impasse existed when it imposed the new contractual terms, violating the National Labor Relations Act. It said the 17 "were presented with the 'Hobson's choice' of continuing to work ... under greatly diminished conditions that flowed from the violation of their ... rights." The judge said the company, in violating the law by unilaterally changing those terms and conditions of employment, must at the request of the Communication Workers of America restore any unilaterally modified terms and conditions of employment and rescind the changes it made until it and the union reach an agreement. Dish was ordered to rehire an employee it fired in 2016 without having previously notified the union, in violation of an agreement for such prior notification. The firm in a statement Wednesday said it "respectfully disagrees with the NLRB’s ruling. The CWA refused to meaningfully negotiate on behalf of its represented workers in North Texas for more than a year and, in our view, is responsible for the impasse central to the decision. DISH acted lawfully at all relevant times and we are considering all available options, including appeal.”

The consumer handheld satellite phone market will likely raise equipment prices or boost average revenue per user as major players look to compete with the land-mobile market, said Northern Sky Research Research Director Claude Rousseau in a NSR blog post Wednesday. He said the consumer handheld market -- targeting outdoors enthusiasts, remote workers and emergency services -- is expected to exceed 1 million in-service units by 2026. By trying to expand into new markets, the equipment will have to add features that will add to the expense, NSR said. It said Globalstar still dominates the consumer handheld market with its Spot products, and it -- plus Iridium's InReach and Thuraya SatSleeve -- could reach the 1 million mark.

With Sky-B1 scheduled for launch Feb. 14, DirecTV is asking for time for in-orbit testing and to drift it to its authorized location at 43.1 degrees west. In an FCC International Bureau application Monday for special temporary authority, DirecTV said Sky-B1 should be in orbit at 33 degrees west by Feb. 20, and in-orbit testing should last 26 days, followed by a 10-day drift. The company said it's working on coordination with operators of satellites within six degrees of the orbital testing location, and they should wrap up before testing begins.

Intelsat is seeking a little extra time to relocate its Galaxy 11 satellite from 45 degrees east to 44.9 degrees east. In an FCC International Bureau application Monday for 90 more days of special temporary authority (STA), the company said Galaxy 11 is operating at 45 degrees east now under an STA (see 1608040011) and is in the process of picking up some customer traffic currently carried on Intelsat 12, which also is located at 45 degrees east. it said once that transfer is complete, Galaxy 11 will drift to its licensed home at 44.9 degrees east.

The FCC's existing full-band, full-arc earth station licensing policy is vital for satellite truck operators and their occasional use, short-term mobile satellite operations, said one of those operators, Pacific Satellite Connection (PacSat), in a filing Monday in RM-11778. It responded to a Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition petition for changes in earth station licensing (see 1610180035). PacSat said it sometimes doesn't know what venue from which it will provide satellite services until a few days prior, and thus has to coordinate frequencies on a very short notice. It said the C-band frequencies and satellites on which it operates for different events can depend on available frequencies and satellite capacity, and thus "the rigid licensing regime proposed by FWCC ... would render these services all but impossible." FWCC didn't comment.

SpaceX talk of hitting $30 billion in annual revenue by 2025 is almost surely overly optimistic and could ultimately undermine satellite industry credibility by creating unrealistic expectations, said Northern Sky Research analyst Lluc Palerm-Serra in a blog post Monday. That figure is more than the $19.7 billion NSR is forecasting for the satellite industry's overall data capacity revenue in 2025 -- and the firm expects much of that figure to come from video-related applications, which aren't apparently a target for SpaceX operations, it said. It said SpaceX's figure is also higher than previous forecasts for the whole data-centric applications market. It also would make SpaceX one of the world's largest telco operators and its internet business "would become the fastest enterprise ever to cross the $1 B benchmark after entering commercial operations," NSR said. The market for unconnected and under-connected households is huge at perhaps 471 million, but most of those are in low-income nations, it said. Such growth as SpaceX forecast would be great for the industry overall, NSR said, but company officials are "masters of strategic communications and have repeatedly made extravagant announcements to push analysts, the financial community, the industry and employees in its favor." SpaceX didn't comment.

A geostationary satellite system operator granted U.S. market access must keep a big enough surety bond on file to cover the amount due to the Treasury Department in the event of a default, until the FCC International Bureau determines it has met milestones laid out in agency rules Section 25.164, the bureau said in a public notice in Thursday's Daily Digest. Not maintaining that bond for the required amount will void the U.S. market access grant without any FCC action, the bureau said, saying the PN is to clarify revised milestone and bond provisions set in the agency's 2015 update of Part 25 satellite rules (see 1512170036).

A particularly large number of earth station licenses are to expire this year, Fletcher Heald said Wednesday in a blog post. Since the FCC International Bureau doesn't notify licensees and registrants of license expiration dates, it said, they should review their authorizations to make sure any applications are properly filed.

Gilat and AirMedia Group signed a deal to provide in-flight connectivity services over mainland China, Gilat said in a news release Tuesday. It said the service will use its own high-throughput satellite platform alongside ChinaSatcom's Ka-band capacity to be launched this year, and should begin commercial rollout in early 2018. Gilat China General Manager Jun Xiang said the company is in talks with several other potential Chinese and international partners about similar in-flight connectivity ventures in China.

The Gray/Dish Network retransmission dispute likely won't end quickly, judging by the tone of comments by Gray, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker emailed investors Tuesday. Dish probably has 2 million Gray viewers, but the financial impact to the broadcaster likely will be mitigated by the fact most of its reverse compensation subscription base is variable, so it won't owe the full reverse comp to networks if Gray stops receiving retrans revenue from Dish, she wrote. She said Dish likely could face subscriber losses well in excess of 7 percent in Gray markets in this dispute, and Gray could snag a sizable amount of Dish-related retrans when those lost Dish subscribers move to other multichannel video programming distributors. Gray, announcing the carriage disruption to have taken effect 7 p.m. Tuesday, said Dish "has refused after many months to even begin negotiating carriage terms that are consistent with those that Dish has provided to other broadcasters and cable channels." Pointing to other recent disruptions involving Gray stations or other broadcasters, Gray said it didn't expect the blackout to end soon. In a statement, Dish said it was still working to reach a deal before the contract expiration, and the broadcaster was "simply trying to use consumers as pawns in an effort to gain leverage for their own economic benefit.”