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.

High-throughput satellites, non-geostationary orbit satellite constellations and high-altitude platform stations (HAPS) are starting to offer global broadband connectivity and could play a key part in "a truly ubiquitous and affordable broadband ecosystem," reported ITU's Working Group on Technologies in Space and the Upper-Atmosphere Monday. It said advantages of space and upper-atmosphere platforms include wide area coverage, geography agnosticism, ease of deployment and reliability. The group said policymakers need to ensure sufficient spectrum protection for such platforms and globally harmonize spectrum where possible for satellite and broadband HAPS. It recommended "technology-neutral policy making" by regulators and streamlining of satellite and HAPS licensing, urging governments to ensure ITU and other bodies develop HAPS standards expeditiously.

With the handoff of traffic of Ku-band traffic from AMC-1 to SES-15 looking to be "unusually complicated," SES is asking for FCC International Bureau approval to modify its authority to serve the U.S. market with SES-15 from 129.15 degrees west. In an application Thursday, SES said AMC-1 is being relocated from that orbital slot to 130.9 degrees west before SES-15 arrives, but it wants to provide overlapping services from both orbital locations during AMC-1's drift. It said the traffic transfer complication is because AMC-1 is a traditional wide-beam satellite while SES-15 is a high-throughput satellite with multiple spot beams, so dual illumination of the two when they're collocated isn't technically feasible since the wide area beam and spot beams would cause interference. It also said customers' network configurations are very different on SES-15, and customers need more time to configure and test their networks on it.

Black TV News Channel is continuing to advocate for waiver of the requirement that programming carried on direct broadcast satellite noncommercial reserved channels be commercial-free. In an FCC docket 14-77 filing Friday, BTNC recapped meetings in July and August with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai to discuss its request -- dating back a decade (see 0710300131) -- for a three-year waiver.

With monetary penalties being uninsurable under Colorado law and Telephone Consumer Protection Act statutory damages being penalties under Colorado law, a U.S. District judge in Denver was right in holding that Dish Network's Ace American Insurance policies don't cover the TCPA litigation brought by the federal government and four states, Ace said in a docket 17-1140 reply brief (in Pacer) Wednesday in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The TCPA lawsuit also seeks equitable remedies, but those remedies don't qualify as damages under Colorado law or Ace policies, it said. The insurer also said Dish can't invoke coverage that covers insureds in the broadcasting business, which Dish is, or coverage of damages from an "occurrence" of accidental or fortuitous events, since none of the alleged telemarketing conduct fits that bill. Dish didn't comment Thursday. Dish also is in litigation with National Union Fire Insurance Co. over indemnification of it in the combined federal/state TCPA complaint (see 1708220024).