The sizable royalty rate hike instituted by the Copyright Royalty Board last month (see 1712150022) will take about 18 months to trickle down across SiriusXM's various subscriber packages in the form of higher subscription rates, Chief Financial Officer David Frear said Wednesday during an investor presentation. He said the company is a significant beneficiary of recently passed tax reform. He said SiriusXM currently doesn't pay cash taxes, but the reform delays when it does pay to 2020 and will save the company about $200 million a year in tax payments starting in 2021, which is "absolutely huge." Asked about potential mergers and acquisitions, Frear said SiriusXM organic growth opportunities "are still massive" with the number of vehicles on the road with receivers expected to grow from 100 million today to 185 million over the next eight years. He said connected cars could allow for the company's reallocation of bandwidth for potential video or data delivery.

Orbital ATK and Northrop Grumman are seeking FCC approval for the former's takeover by the latter. In an International Bureau filing Wednesday, they said Orbital ATK's name will change but all FCC licenses it holds will remain with it and each license held by an ATK subsidiary will remain with that subsidiary. They said no licenses would be assigned to Northrop Grumman or other corporate entities due to the transaction. They asked that agency approval cover current licenses, any FCC authorization given during the pendency of the transaction before it closes, and any ATK application submitted that is pending when the transfer is consummated. They said ATK will update FCC administrative records with its new name after it has been determined and announced. The $9.2 billion deal announced last year was seen facing little regulatory difficulty (see 1709180041).

The land mobile via satellite industry should see cumulative revenue of more than $19.4 billion between 2016 and 2026, Northern Sky Research said Wednesday. It said after "a challenging" 2015-2016, mobile satellite service (MSS) land revenue is growing again due to some growth in energy markets and to more product diversity such as hot spot devices and consumer handhelds. It said sales of push-to-talk devices remain slow, and sales of traditional handheld devices are expected to peak in 2020. NSR said better terrestrial network reliability, cellular network footprint expansion and 5G all will mean tougher competition for MSS operators and service providers. It said increased market share depends on cutting costs, with a focus also needed on partnering and integrating with terrestrial network operators.

ViaSat's commercial broadband service via ViaSat-2 is still slated to begin in February despite some in-orbit antenna issues, the company said Tuesday. It said it has begun beta service on the satellite and finished a number of performance tests. It said there will be further testing during the beta period as satellite builder Boeing identified the antenna issue that had some spot beams "perform[ing] differently than they did during ground testing." It said Boeing and ViaSat are jointly working on determining the root cause and corrective measures. ViaSat said the issue shouldn't affect the coverage area of the satellite or materially impact the planned services.

The U.S. District Court in Houston doesn't have jurisdiction over Adam Lackman, a Canadian, and Shahjahan Durrani, a British citizen, in Dish Network's copyright complaint against their ZemTV and TVaddons websites, the defendants said in a docket 17-CV-1618 motion to dismiss (in Pacer) Friday. They said they lack any continuous and systematic contacts with Texas, having never been there personally, and never directed business activity of any kind there. Dish didn't comment Tuesday. Last year it sued (in Pacer) the two, alleging they abetted video piracy through retransmission of channels exclusively licensed to Dish through the ZemTV add-on, downloadable at TVaddons websites, for the Kodi media player. Dish in its suit said the defendants marketed and distributed the ZemTV service and add-on to consumers in Texas and caused Dish injury in that judicial district.

Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler met with Commissioner Mike O'Rielly to urge the agency to issue an NPRM that would open parts of the C-band to terrestrial 5G operations, as the company jointly proposed with Intel (see 1710020047), according to a docket 17-183 ex parte filing posted Tuesday. The company also has made similar overtures to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (see 1712040062) and 1712200038).

Satellite services company Hexagon Positioning Intelligence is raising concerns about Iridium's proposed Certus class of user terminals to be deployed with its Next satellite constellation. In an FCC International Bureau filing Monday, it said some of Iridium's proposals on power output and number of terminals to be deployed "cause great concern" about unimpeded operation of radio navigation satellite service (RNSS) receivers, and information is insufficient to gauge the effects. Hexagon asked the FCC to set up a technical working group or other testing process that ensures unimpeded coexistence between Iridium's terminals and the existing RNSS systems. Iridium emailed that its terminals "have co-existed successfully with GPS devices for two decades and the Iridium Certus mobile earth stations will protect GPS operations in the 1559-1610 MHz band.”

Connectivity, cyber security, in-flight connectivity, smallsats and terminal development with core modules are likely to be the biggest focuses of the satcom industry this year, GateHouse Telecom said Tuesday. It said the drive for ubiquitous connectivity will push the satcom industry to further integrate with other communications media like Wi-Fi and GSM. It said the aviation industry is moving toward normalizing in-flight Wi-Fi for passengers and real-time tracking. It said the introduction of core modules in satcom terminal development has cut expenses and time. And it said use of off-the-shelf solutions is becoming a key part of smallsat delivery.

The FAA doesn't regulate the noise of space launch vehicles, but NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service apparently does, space lawyer Laura Montgomery blogged Monday. She said the incidental harassment authorization that SpaceX received for its sonic booms raises questions about why NOAA has such authority and whether the Marine Fisheries Service falls under the Commercial Space Launch Act exceptions for approvals that space launch operations need.

Dish Network doesn't deny that a lower court used improper summary judgment evidence in its ruling in a trademark infringement claim (see 1704130013) and that evidence should have been disregarded, appellant Dishnet Satellite Connections said in a docket 17-1110 reply brief (in Pacer) Friday with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. At the very least, Dishnet said, the factual dispute should have made summary judgment improper. Dishnet also said there's uncontroverted evidence that Kathy King used the Dishnet trademark for years, making her the senior user, and the summary judgment should be reversed. Appellee Dish, in its brief (in Pacer) in December, said the complaint by Dishnet and owner King is a straightforward breach-of-contract case, and her Digital Satellite Connections (DSC) -- which she created the day her contract as a Dish-authorized retailer expired and to which she transferred the trademarks and domain names in question -- wasn't a bona fide purchase and thus can't claim title to the property. Dish also said the appellants don't directly dispute the lower court acted in its discretion ordering King and DSC to transfer the assets to Dish.