SpaceX plans to start offering mobile supplemental coverage from space starting next year, said its Starlink website. It said its SCS coverage will start with texting service in 2024, to be followed by voice and data service and IoT service in 2025.

Rather than an either/or choice between geostationary orbit (GSO) or low earth orbit connectivity providers, the maritime shipping industry is increasingly taking a hybrid approach, Valour Consultancy blogged Thursday. Meanwhile, SpaceX's Starlink maritime service is growing, providing connectivity to thousands of maritime vessels and there has been a "definite slowdown" in the number of publicly announced GSO very small aperture terminal installations over the past year, it said. Danish shipping company Maersk said Thursday its 330-plus container vessels will have Starlink installed, after a pilot trial on more than 30 Maersk vessels.

GPS jamming is on the rise in Gaza and the West Bank, with the war between Israel and Hamas, the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation blogged Tuesday. It said the source of the increase in interference -- Israeli or Hamas forces -- is tough to pin down because each could be trying to degrade the effectiveness of the other's weapons and the ability of forces to coordinate and maneuver.

Having launched two prototype satellites Friday, Amazon's Kuiper expects to start providing commercial broadband service by the end of 2024, Amazon blogged this week. It said its three customer terminals will offer speeds of up to 100 Mbps, 400 Mbps or 1 Gbps. It didn't give pricing details but said "affordability is a key principle of Project Kuiper."

Any FCC Wireless Bureau authorization of commercial supplemental coverage from space (SCS) operations should be through a waiver-based approach, AT&T said Tuesday in docket 23-135. Citing SpaceX's proposed use of T-Mobile spectrum, AT&T said that requires waivers, and SpaceX's special temporary authority application filed last week contains none of the needed waiver requests. It said the novel testing SpaceX proposes should be handled by an experimental license. In its STA application, SpaceX asked for 60 days starting Dec. 1 to launch and test its second-generation satellites with direct-to-mobile payloads as they connect with unmodified mobile phones using T-Mobile's PCS G Block spectrum.

AT&T is deciding what to do with its 70% stake in DirecTV, including a dividend recapitalization, bringing in a new investor, or selling its stake, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. AT&T declined comment. It spun off part of the business two years ago, with TPG Capital picking up 30% (see 2107160069). AT&T expects declining cash flow from DirecTV, Chief Financial Officer Pascal Desroches said at a Bank of America financial conference last month. “Those cash flows are much more resilient than many believe,” he said: “We're really happy with the way the business is being managed.”

Dish Network "has a long track record of safely flying a large satellite fleet and takes seriously its responsibilities as an FCC licensee," the company emailed us Monday in response to the FCC Enforcement Bureau's $150,000 fine over disposal of the company's EchoStar-7 satellite (see 2310020049). "As the Enforcement Bureau recognizes in the settlement, the EchoStar-7 satellite was an older spacecraft (launched in 2002) that had been explicitly exempted from the FCC’s rule requiring a minimum disposal orbit. Moreover, the Bureau made no specific findings that EchoStar-7 poses any orbital debris safety concerns," it said.

Dish Network will pay a $150,000 fine for improper disposal of its EchoStar-7 at the satellite's end of life, the FCC Enforcement Bureau ordered Monday. The bureau said Dish disposed of EchoStar-7 in 2022 at 122 km above its operational geostationary orbit instead of the 300 km specified in the debris mitigation plan in Dish's license. It said the satellite had less propellant than Dish estimated, resulting in the lower graveyard orbit. “As satellite operations become more prevalent and the space economy accelerates, we must be certain that operators comply with their commitments,” Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said: “This is a breakthrough settlement, making very clear the FCC has strong enforcement authority and capability to enforce its vitally important space debris rules.” Dish didn't comment.

The waiver requests in Lockheed Martin's pending application for a lunar surface and lunar orbit communications network (see 2303160002) run contrary to the shared and equitable frequency use needed for lunar operations, Astrolab told the FCC Space Bureau last week. "Rather than hastily granting broad spectrum rights to any one party ahead of broader government and international decisions," the FCC should follow spectrum management principles such as clear interference protections for shared use of lunar frequencies and neutral authorizations and sharing of spectrum among lunar systems and services, it said. Astrolab says it's developing a multipurpose rover to operate semi-autonomously on the moon, with its first commercial mission expected in 2026. It said it intends to seek FCC approval for the rover's radio system. It also urged FCC coordination of its approaches to Lockheed Martin and other commercial operations on the moon with other federal agencies' lunar activities and planning.

Comments are due Dec. 26 on an FAA NPRM proposing that upper stages of commercial launch rockets be removed from orbit within 25 years after launch, said a notice in the Federal Register last week. The FAA proposal would cover anything larger than 5 mm. It's proposing a requirement that removal be within 30 days of the mission's completion if disposal is by controlled disposal or by a move to a disposal orbit or Earth-escape orbit; within five years if disposal is by retrieval; or within 25 years if using atmospheric uncontrolled disposal or natural decay.