Senate Commerce Member Ed Markey, D-Mass., is pushing Dish Network and CBS to settle a blackout (see 1711210024) before the airing of Sunday's New England Patriots/Miami Dolphins NFL matchup. He said the contract dispute "will make a lot of fans frustrated when they tune into the Patriots on Sunday and see nothing but a blank screen." CBS in a statement Wednesday said "pulling content providers off the air is DISH's way of doing things" and that it and Dish remain far apart on contractual terms. It said it hasn't been part of a blackout since the last expiration of its Dish agreement, in November 2014. Dish didn't comment. "To be clear, CBS blacked out its own viewers," Dish said in a statement, adding that it's awaiting CBS' response to its latest offer, which it gave the network before it pulled its signal from Dish. "The channels could come back today if CBS would allow it," it said.

SES wants to temporarily operate a network of very small aperture terminals to test the Ku-band spot beams on its SES-15 satellite. In an FCC International Bureau special temporary authority request filed Friday, SES said the temporary VSAT network will allow SES-15 testing before commencement of commercial operations with the satellite in January. The STA asked for 30 days of approval, commencing Dec. 1, to operate 13 1.2-meter terminals in California, Hawaii, Maryland and Washington to communicate with SES-1, SES-3 and SES-15. SES-15 was launched in May and is expected to arrive at its assigned orbital position by Dec. 22, it said.

Eutelsat wants to relocate its Eutelsat 172A satellite from 172 degrees east to 174 degrees east to supplement capacity in the Asia-Pacific, including U.S. government communication requirements, the company said in an FCC International Bureau filing Friday. It hopes to start the drift as soon as Wednesday and plans to file a separate request for authority to operate at the new orbital location. The agency earlier this month approved Eutelsat's request to operate Eutelsat 172B from the 172 degree east orbital location as a replacement of 172A.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved Iridium's role in a series of NASA-conducted experiments involving the Technical Educational Satellite-6 (TechEdSat-6) low earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellite. OET's special temporary authority granted Monday said an Iridium satellite phone will be used on the satellite to transmit to satellites in Iridium's LEO constellation, with those transmissions being part of an experiment in using the Iridium constellation in tracking and data relay for nanosatellites. The company said it will transmit in the 1618.725-1626.5 MHz band and that TechEdSat-6 will be in orbit at most 30 days.

Botswana became the first nation outside the U.S. to OK Globalstar's terrestrial S-band authority and to sign off on it providing terrestrial mobile broadband services over the 2483.5-2500 MHz band, the company said Thursday, announcing Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority approval. It said it filed its application earlier this year and received accelerated review. It said that through its commercial gateway in Botswana the company began providing coverage in 2015 to 14 African nations and surrounding ocean areas for commercial shipping markets. Globalstar said it hoped to get at least some foreign regulatory approvals this year for its terrestrial low-power service plans, and has applications pending in a variety of countries (see 1701300039).

After what it called "several challenging years," Northern Sky Research said the fixed very small aperture terminal market should rebound, with the VSAT installed base reaching 17.8 million active sites and generating $25.6 billion annually by 2026. NSR said Wednesday a key driver of that expected growth is newly available North American capacity, letting it add subscribers. The researcher expects more than 7 Tbps of new demand will be generated over the next decade due to new subscribers and their bandwidth consumption growth. It said margins will be thin due to competition. Also this week, a meeting in Washington focused on the industry.

The Ka- and Ku-bands have “served us well,” enabling satellite broadband, but “we need to grow out of them,” with the Q- and V-band critical for the industry’s additional spectrum needs, said Hughes Executive Vice President-Engineer Adrian Morris Tuesday at VSAT Congress. Citing the unified front the wireless industry presents on spectrum issues, he urged a more unified satellite voice and more cooperation between low Earth and geostationary orbit constellation interests. He said it will be tough for satellite to retain all spectrum rights, but said it will have more success with a focus on necessities. The industry needs some dedicated bands, but co-primary status “is not a bad place to be,” he said. He said Hughes is “strongly looking” at Q-band technology, in large part because Earth station hardware advanced to enable use of the band. The very small aperture terminal (VSAT) industry is struggling with data price wars squeezing mar- gins, said Susan Bull, Comsys senior consultant. Demand is growing for satellite-enabled mobile services, but they also are becoming a commoditized service, she said. Almost all 2.3 million consumer VSAT sites in service are in North America, with attempts at offering consumer services in developing markets having failed, Bull said. She said new Hughes and ViaSat efforts to expand into developing markets could succeed, though challenged by affordability issues. Bull said the industry is still struggling to see how it can compete with terrestrial data providers, especially since bandwidth around the globe sometimes is being sold way below cost. VSAT’s key problem—latency—will be tackled by low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit satellites and high-altitude platform stations, and VSATs need to bounce from LEOs to geostationary satellites, and integrate with terrestrial wireless networks, she said. The satellite industry is moving toward a configurable standard production of satellites, assembled “in a Lego-type situation,” which should drive down costs, said Bull. She said there’s growing VSAT distrust of satellite operators as the latter move into VSAT operator markets.

Noncommercial KMTP-TV San Francisco said it was denied carriage on Dish Network because it sent notice by priority express mail instead of certified mail, in an FCC carriage complaint filed by licensee Minority Television Project. “All of the information” required for carriage was provided, the broadcaster said. The FCC should order Dish to carry KMTP despite Dish’s “hyper-technical reading” of the rules, the complaint said.

NPR's public radio satellite system (PRSS) downlinks are low-powered, meaning "virtual certainty" that any terrestrial use of the 3.7-4.2 GHz band would create interference that disrupts public radio broadcasts, executives told aides to FCC Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel, recounted a docket 17-183 ex parte filing posted Wednesday. The public radio programmer said that for FY 2018, Congress approved the first of a multiyear financial contribution that will total more than $50 million to update PRSS over the next decade.

Shared mobile/satellite use of the C band under the model being pitched by Intelsat and Intel (see 1710040013) wouldn't compromise certainty, reliability or quality of broadcasting of media content to cable headends, Intelsat Senior Vice President-Sales and Marketing Kurt Riegelman blogged. He said its proposal would have satellite remain co-primary in the 3700-4200 MHz band. Riegelman said avoiding co-frequency use in certain areas but giving satellite the ability to use all 500 MHz elsewhere would preserve quality of programming distribution throughout the band. In a separate blog Tuesday, Intelsat Vice President-Spectrum Strategy Hazem Moakkit said the Intelsat/Intel plan doesn't undermine satellite rights to the C band since trying to apply that approach in other nations "is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole." He said C-band use globally generally is fragmented across numerous operators, unlike in the U.S., so the Intelsat/Intel approach is inherently impractical in other regions. Moakkit called "risk of contagion ... quite low" given the rest of the world uses the 3.4-3.6 GHz band for mobile while 3.4-3.7 GHz in the U.S. is for federal use and citizens broadband radio service. Since the C-band is a capacity band, its 5G use would only be in densely populated areas, he said. He said much of Africa, Asia and South America uses the C-band for a wide variety of services, so joint use isn't viable there.