The growth in satellite-based maritime connectivity means ships are increasingly vulnerable to the same cybersecurity threats that land-based industries constantly face, Northern Sky Research (NSR) analyst Brad Grady blogged Friday. An additional 80,000-plus vessels will get broadband connectivity by 2026, and thus providers of maritime connectivity services increasingly are talking about cybersecurity issues, NSR said. That could set the framework for "a robust industry response," as well as represent potential revenue streams for maritime service providers, NSR said.

The treble damages awarded plaintiffs in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint against Dish Network were neither excessive nor meaningfully duplicative, U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles of Greensboro, North Carolina, said Tuesday, rejecting Dish attempts to set aside the verdict (see 1702140010). A docket 1:14-CV-333 order (in Pacer) said Dish had ample opportunity during the litigation to bring up that it thought any claim was the same as the claims brought by the FTC and four states, including North Carolina (see 1706060069). The company didn't comment Thursday.

Iridium began live testing its L-band broadband Iridium Certus service on its operational Next satellites, the company said Thursday. It said it plans to make Certus commercially available in Q2 and will be capable of speeds of up to 1.4 Mbps. It said Certus terminals are being built by several manufacturers, and live on-orbit testing of the terminals will be done as they're ready.

The FCC needs to continue to reserve the 48.2-50.2 uplink band and corresponding 40-42 GHz downlink band for exclusive fixed satellite service (FSS) use, since they're two of the only spectrum slices where satellite operators can deploy user terminals widely with full interference protection, EchoStar told an aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr, said a docket 14-177 filing posted Wednesday. The company urged the agency to optimize FSS access to the 47.2-48.2, 50.4-51.4 and 51.4-52.4 GHz bands for individually licensed earth station deployment and to allow FSS operations in the 37.5-40 GHz band at higher power flux density levels to compensate for rain fade. The company repeated the case it and other satellite operators made for spectrum frontiers order rules changes (see 1710030024).

The federal National Space Council will put together a plan to present to the White House for a full review of the nation’s regulatory framework for commercial space operations, with the aim of streamlining and reducing regulatory burdens. That plan should be done in 45 days, Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday at the reconstituted council’s first meeting. Representatives of SpaceX, Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corp., speaking before the council about needs of the commercial space industry, cited regulatory reform. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said a council commitment to streamlining launch regulations, which need updating due to new technologies and the increased cadence of launches, would help foster U.S. space innovation. Shotwell said "it requires heroics" to get changes made to FAA-issued launch licenses. Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith said traditional rockets fit into existing regulatory categories, but reusable rocket capabilities lead to a duplicative overlap between the FAA and the Air Force. Sierra Nevada CEO Fatih Ozmen backed the equivalent of a free trade zone aboard U.S.-flagged space vehicles or the International Space Station, and said the U.S. should commit to operating the ISS through at least the end of the 2020s because of its potential role as a stepping stone to deep space.

The FCC Media Bureau is partially modifying the local satellite-TV market of KVTJ-DT, Jonesboro, Arkansas, for DirecTV and Dish Network, said a docket 17-157 order Wednesday. Victory TV sought the addition of five Arkansas and two Missouri counties, and the petition was unopposed, the bureau said. But DirecTV showed technical or economic infeasibility for 59 ZIP codes, and Dish did likewise with one county and part of another, the bureau said, granting the petition except for those contested areas.

Presenters at Euroconsult's World Satellite Business Week conference last month in Paris were more upbeat than a year ago, indicating declines in fixed satellite service revenue may be past, Summit Ridge Group Armand Musey blogged Monday. Most of the planned high-throughput capacity has yet to enter service, and the logic that HTS capacity coming online will increase revenue is questionable, Musey said. Privately, participants said they're not seeing evidence of price stabilization or demand growing outside mobility applications, and there's growing acceptance low-Earth orbit satellites likely will displace geostationary demand.

Among nontraditional space applications, the Earth/space sector -- infrastructure and services provided on Earth to facilitate use of space, such as launch services -- will continue to be the dominant business model in the near term, Northern Sky Research analyst Carolyn Belle blogged Monday. But the space/space and space/Earth segments will start being opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs as long as they can avoid already-saturated applications, NSR said. Space/space is services delivered in space, such as satellite servicing and space tourism, NSR said, and space/Earth is services delivered from space assets for use on Earth, it said. NSR said Earth/space includes nearly half of nontraditional space companies founded, but most of the funding for Earth/space companies went to SpaceX and Blue Origin. It said outside funding for space/space is limited, with Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace having the most investment.

Satellite broadband companies are asking the FCC to modify high-band spectrum rules, including revision of the population coverage limit for fixed satellite service (FSS) earth stations in the 28 and 39 GHz bands. In a docket 14-177 ex parte filing posted Monday, EchoStar, SES/O3b, OneWeb, Inmarsat and Intelsat recapped meetings where they backed doubling the population coverage limit from 0.1 percent of a population in an upper microwave flexible use license area to 0.2 percent in densely populated areas and going with a fixed population limit in low and medium density license areas, and a 5 percent or 10 percent population converge limit for sparsely populated areas. The companies said there needs to be better transient population limit definitions, elimination of rules capping FSS operators to three earth stations in any county for 28 GHz or partial economic area for 39 GHz. They advocated reserving the 48.2-50.2 GHz band as exclusively for FSS and giving FSS better and "more equitable" access to the 47.2-48.2, 50.4-51.4 and 51.4-52.4 GHz bands. The companies met with staffers from the International and Wireless bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology. The companies and other satellite operators have pushed for similar spectrum frontiers rules rewrites (see 1612160019).

Satellite IoT and machine-to-machine company Orbcomm bought Blue Tree Systems, an Irish transportation management services company serving North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, it said Monday.