SAN JOSE, Calif. - Pay-TV distributors should play up the technology included in set-top boxes in their marketing so consumers assign some value to the devices, Dish Chief Marketing Officer Ira Bahr said at a conference Thursday. Calling the set-top the “worst category name in the history of consumer electronics products,” Bahr said most consumers assign no value to the devices, and react harshly to fees associated with them. “We, ourselves and as an industry, have failed to create any distinction between what is a box feature and what is a service feature,” he said. “We're introducing a lot of features and people are yawning.” Pay-TV’s esteem among consumers has fallen when compared to coveted product along the lines of Apple’s iPhone to something little different from a power company, he said: “Many of these problems would be ameliorated if we could get to a place where people ascribe some value” to the box.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Space debris in low earth orbit will make satellite operations there increasingly difficult, possibly requiring some sort of device to catch the floating “dead bodies” and bring them back to Earth, said Wade Pulliam, a Tactical Technology Office program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The huge number of maneuvers to avoid conjunctions will continue to increase dramatically if launch schedules and compliance continue at the status quo, he told a American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. Those maneuvers can reduce the lives of LEO satellites, he said. As a result, he said there are two options for the LEO satellites: Operators will need to increase the accuracy of maneuvers, making movements only when truly necessary to extend satellite life, or remove the space debris.

The FCC Wireline and Wireless bureaus sought more comment in the net neutrality proceeding Wednesday. That effectively kicks key decisions on that and broadband reclassification back until after the November elections, said many agency and industry officials. Odds had already appeared slim that Chairman Julius Genachowski would circulate an order on his proposed “third way” reclassification plan Thursday, for a vote at the Sept. 23 open meeting. The development also effectively provides more time for industry discussions, like the ones underway at the Information Technology Industry Council.

Dish Network gets a step closer to being able to resume importing signals of TV stations outside subscribers’ home markets with the same affiliation as the local broadcaster, in a draft FCC order delivering on part of this year’s Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act, agency officials said. They said the draft would certify the DBS provider as carrier of such distant TV signals because it’s carrying TV stations in all 210 markets. That would let Dish meet another part of STELA so it can resume carrying stations to subscribers who wouldn’t be able to get their local station with an antenna.

The FCC pulled the plug on M2Z’s proposal for a free broadband network in the AWS-3 band, which had been before the commission since 2007, the company said Wednesday. M2Z’s proposal faced continuing opposition from industry, especially T-Mobile, the top bidder in the AWS-1 auction. The FCC notified M2Z backers of its decision to end the AWS-3 public interest rulemaking “thereby closing off the possibility” of the free network, the company said.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Pay-TV providers need to “become the preferred store that consumers go to to get their video service,” said Chief Technology Officer Dave Grubb of Motorola’s Moto Home division told a set-top box conference Wednesday. As the TV and set-top become more capable of running multiple applications, providers need to offer a one-stop shop where customers can go for all their video needs, he said. “Consumers will prefer this.” They aren’t “big fans of piece-building their service solutions and getting a little bit from here and a little bit from there,” said Grubb.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- While satellite manufacturers have the technical ability to provide modern broadband speeds, it isn’t clear yet if the economics are right for mass satellite broadband offerings, said Christopher Hoeber, Space Systems/Loral senior vice president of program management and systems engineering during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. Broadband satellites require about three times as much equipment as most other satellites, adding to their costs and power needs, he said on a panel. The difficulty of designing Internet protocols to deal with the inherent latency of the satellite broadband and the expense of modems also make satellite broadband a difficult business, he said.

Tests in Boulder, Colo., are studying questions raised as public safety systems make sure of LTE for the first 700 MHz network deployments, the manager of the National Institute of Standards and Testing’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program said Tuesday in a speech at the FCC. Dereck Orr also said the program will run a second set of tests in Washington to examine a public safety network in a real city. NIST will also consider a permanent “testbed” in Boulder to take up problems as they appear, he said.

Conventional pay-TV operators should use new technologies such as 3D TV and whole-home DVRs to differentiate themselves from coming competition from online video and other sources, Yankee Group analysts said on a webinar Tuesday. They surveyed pay-TV subscribers about what might make them change service providers. Though price is still the main reason subscribers cite, new technologies are starting to emerge as a point of competition, said Vince Vittore. “More and more, these types of applications show up as reasons why people would consider moving their pay-TV subscription,” he said. “You can get some true differentiation among different types of pay-TV providers."

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Arianespace will rely on a wider range of launch vehicles to give the company stability as the large satellite operators’ launch campaigns approach the tail end of launch cycles, said Clay Mowry, the U.S. president of Arianespace said on a panel at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. While the company’s revenue has suffered in the past from the end of commercial satellite launch cycles, Arianespace is hoping that a bigger variety of launch vehicles to launch different types of satellites will help keep its manifest schedule full, he said. Maintaining a full manifest is the biggest challenge for the company, especially since it has so little effect on demand for launch services, he said.