The global satellite machine-to-machine and IoT market should reach $2.9 billion in annual retail revenue by 2026, Northern Sky Research said Tuesday. NSR said land tracking, and particularly cargo tracking, likely will be the most profitable and competitive segment. It said most M2M and IoT services need only low bandwidth currently, but some verticals over the next decade will need additional bandwidth requirements for big data analysis, engine telematics and live data streaming, and those could be targeted by new mobile satellite service constellations. Low bandwidth and latency insensitive applications will be the focus of small satellite constellations, it said, as the business case for smallsat IoT-exclusive constellations is a question mark.

ViaSat and Boeing are starting construction, integration and testing of what are to be the first two ViaSat-3 satellites, they said Monday. ViaSat completed critical design review milestones for the ViaSat-3 class, they said. The ViaSat-3 payload is being designed and built by ViaSat, and Boeing is building the all-electric propulsion platform, which will be delivered to ViaSat's satellite integration facility for installation and testing, they said. Then the completed payload module will be sent back to Boeing for further testing for launch and operational readiness.

The National Labor Relations Board didn't apply the right legal standards and ignored its own precedent when it found Dish Network employee arbitration agreement's confidentiality provision violates the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the company said in a docket 17-60368 brief (in Pacer) filed Friday with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It said NLRB improperly concluded a one-time oral command to a worker to keep a workplace investigation private was an NLRA violation despite the board also concluding Dish didn't have any workplace rule to that effect. The company is appealing an April 13 NLRB decision on a complaint brought by a Colorado call center worker who was suspended for alleged workplace policy violations and subsequently fired. The NLRB didn't comment Monday.

SiriusXM completed its $480 million “strategic investment” to buy 19 percent of Pandora’s stock (see 1706090005), the satellite radio service said in a Friday announcement. SiriusXM Chairman Greg Maffei, CEO Jim Meyer and Chief Financial Officer David Frear will take seats on the Pandora board and Maffei will become Pandora chairman, the company said. The closing also marks Elizabeth Nelson’s departure from the Pandora board, which now has nine seats, it said.

SiriusXM-Pandora faces a “fairly benign” competitive landscape, Macquarie Capital's Amy Yong wrote investors Wednesday. Competitor promotions were minimal in Q3, while documents on Spotify’s pending initial public offering show 60 million-plus subscribers and 140 million-plus active users, the analyst said. Pandora gave away three free months of Premium through T-Mobile’s Tuesday customer appreciation giveaways, and is the Apple Store's top-grossing app, she said. Cross-pollination means Pandora leveraging SiriusXM content, she noted. Sirius could benefit from a Hurricane Harvey effect as damaged vehicles will drive an upswing in new car sales (see 1709140057 and 1709140044), she said. New Pandora CEO Roger Lynch brings “built and scaled Sling TV under a tight, cost-controlled environment,” she said.

Dish Network subscribers who own Hopper 3 set-tops can view “select” college football games this season from Fox Sports’ FS1 channel 540 live in 4K beginning with Saturday’s Oklahoma-Baylor matchup, Dish said in a Thursday announcement. Dish has offered 4K-ready set-tops for three years, “and 4K TV market share is anticipated to exceed one-in-four U.S. households by the end of 2017,” said Chief Technology Officer Vivek Khemka. The “missing element” has been native 4K programming, he said. The move is part of a “broader agreement” with Fox that will include future 4K coverage of college basketball, Major League Baseball and NASCAR racing, said Dish.

Rural telcos said satellite broadband "is slower and more expensive than the worst broadband provided by landline services" in most urban and many rural areas. FCC data confirmed "satellite latency is 20 times greater" than "typical terrestrial broadband services," said a filing Wednesday in docket 10-90 by Great Plains Communications, Consolidated Companies of Nebraska, Vantage Point Solutions and former Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. They said geostationary satellite latency cannot be improved. "Monthly capacity constraints placed on a customer could be exhausted in only a few hours of heavy usage," the filing said. "Satellite broadband is not well positioned to meet the current and future consumer demands for critical services such as eHealth, distance education, and many business services." The Satellite Industry Association touted satellite broadband as providing robust data speeds able to "scale more quickly and efficiently than terrestrial networks" (see 1709200042).

The 10 satellites making up Iridium's third Next constellation launch are at Vandenberg Air Force Base and scheduled for Oct. 4 liftoff, the company said Wednesday. The launch originally was planned for Sept. 30 (see 1707280016), but SpaceX required more time for rocket preparation, Iridium blogged last month. Iridium Next eventually will consist of 81 satellites -- 66 in operation, 15 on-orbit spares and six ground spares -- and the October launch will be the third of what eventually will be eight, with the constellation to be operational next year, it said.

ViaSat, meeting with FCC International Bureau staffers about high-band spectrum, said satellite operators should retain access to the 40-42 GHz and 48.2-50.2 GHz bands, and satellite should have "meaningful access" to the 47.2-48.2 GHz and 50.4-52.4 GHz bands on equitable sharing terms with terrestrial uses, according to a docket 14-177 ex parte filing posted Monday.

The FCC proposal to replace avoidance angle rules with a trigger based on system noise temperature in the draft non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellites rules order on next week's commissioners' meeting agenda (see 1709110030) is coming under fire from some operators. SpaceX in docket 16-408 filings posted Monday (see here and here) recapped meetings with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai and with International Bureau staff at which the company said the agency's proposed definition of in-line events "could be workable," though with uplinks it could result in "unintended but detrimental consequences" due to the wide variety of NGSO system architectures being proposed. It said any "one size fits all" approach to in-line events will raise the likelihood of having to resort to band splitting for uplinks. SpaceX said the FCC should add a topic to the Further NPRM, specifically defining in-line uplink event parameters, which would minimize those events and promote spectral efficiency. Also raising red flags about the fixed separation angle issue is Telesat Canada, which in a filing in the docket posted Monday recapped discussions with aides to Pai and to Commissioners Brendan Carr, Mignon Clyburn, Mike O'Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel (see here, here, here, here and here). It said the agency's proposed separation standard is as unworkable as its current fixed avoidance angle rules. It also said operators can't exchange information on many of the data items needed to make a trigger based on system noise temperature calculations in advance or in real time. Telesat Canada said "the only workable solution" is through ITU coordination. Intelsat said it's concerned geostationary orbit satellites wouldn't be adequately protected from harmful interference due to some NGSO operators seemingly not meeting equivalent power flux density (EPFD) limits required by the ITU. The company said the FCC needs to independently check the data of NGSO constellation applications it's reviewing and ask for corrections to ensure EPFD requirements, or, at least require the NGSO applicants to provide a set of input information for EPFD showing that third parties could verify. In a filing posted Tuesday, Space Norway said it particularly backed the draft order's proposed elimination of the global and domestic coverage requirements.