Travelers Property Casualty and Dish Network can file amended claims and counterclaims, but those filings can't include claims or counterclaims against Ace American Insurance or any other third party, said U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough of Springfield, Illinois, in an order Thursday. Both insurers are seeking determinations they aren't responsible for defense costs as Dish fights claims by the FTC and California, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio alleging violations of telemarketing sales rules because Dish helped dealers make robocalls and Travelers has tried to amend its complaint to assert a claim against Ace, seeking defense cost contributions from Ace to the extent the two insurers are found to owe Dish defense costs (see 1602120017) while Dish sought to amend its Travelers counterclaim to include third-party claims against Ace. In her order, Myerscough said neither Dish nor Travelers objected to the amendment of the claims and counterclaims against one another, and the changes will relieve them of the burden of maintaining two separate suits: one concerning Travelers' duty to defend Dish and another concerning its duty to indemnify it. She also said she disagreed with Ace's argument that Dish and Travelers "have engaged in inappropriate forum-shopping," but also said she couldn't find good cause to allow the Dish and Travelers third-party claims because the deadline passed more than three years ago. Since Ace and Dish already are litigating their coverage dispute in federal court in Colorado, she said, "Allowing Dish and Travelers to bring issues relating to the Ace policy into this case will only impede the Ace court's resolution of those issues." Dish and Travelers didn't comment.

The Federal Aviation Administration gave a supplemental type certificate for Globalstar's Part 23 light aviation aircraft antenna, saying it meets all FAA quality and safety requirements, Globalstar said in a news release Thursday. The initial issuance was for a Beechcraft Baron, with 700 more aircraft models expected to be added to the approved model list, Globalstar said. The antenna allows voice calls, emailing and Internet access from the cockpit without needing cellular access, it said, saying the antenna will be sold as part of its GSP-1700 mobile satellite phone package and Sat-Fi voice and data package.

Hughes is planning five gateway earth stations to communicate with the Telstar 19 Vantage (T19V) satellite at 63 degrees west, it said in FCC International Bureau filings (see here, here, here, here and here) Tuesday. The gateways will each consist of four 8.1-meter earth station antennas and a 5.6-meter earth station antenna, it said. The satellite is scheduled to go up in Q1 2018, Hughes said, with the earth stations to be used for feeder link services needed for T19V's consumer services to Latin America. The gateway earth station sites will be in Riverside, California; Monee, Illinois; North Platte, Nebraska; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Spokane, Washington, and operate at 27.85-28.6 and 29.25-30 GHz uplinks and 18.3-18.8 and 19.7-20.2 GHz downlinks, it said.

The FCC International Bureau rejected as defective an AT&T application for a fixed earth station, but it can be re-filed. AT&T's Jan. 4 application indicated the power density at the input of the antenna flange would exceed limits set in FCC rules and thus doesn't meet FCC licensing criteria for authority to communicate with permitted satellites, the bureau said in a letter-decision Tuesday. AT&T didn't comment Wednesday.

With a second report and order on 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band being considered for adoption (see 1603110083), satellite industry representatives met with FCC staff including International Bureau Satellite Division Chief Jose Albuquerque to talk about protecting in-band and adjacent band satellite earth stations from interference and about dealing with such interference, the Satellite Industry Association (SIA) said in an ex parte filing in docket 12-354 Tuesday. Satellite officials at the meeting included SIA President Tom Stroup and representatives from Boeing, DirecTV, Intelsat, Lockheed Martin, O3b and SES.

Any Wi-Fi-equipped device should be easily upgradable to operate on channel 14, and terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) access points and client devices certified to operate there will still meet FCC out-of-band emissions requirements for operating on channel 11, Globalstar General Counsel Barbee Ponder told FCC officials, according to an ex parte filing Tuesday in docket 13-213. According to Globalstar, Ponder said some client devices might need a hardware modification for commercially acceptable performance on channel 14, but Globalstar isn't aware of what those devices are. Ponder also said the company's TLPS access points will require connection to and authentication by its network operating system in order to operate on channel 14, and through that the company can stop or end any TLPS access point operations that are in an unauthorized location. Among officials at the meeting was Jose Albuquerque, chief of the International Bureau Satellite Division, said the company.

The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld LightSquared's Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan, shooting down an appeal by former LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja, who was a major stakeholder in the company. In a summary order Tuesday, the 2nd Circuit rejected Ahuja's argument the plan wasn't fair because it overpaid some senior creditors with undervalued equity in the reorganized company, saying the court's conclusion "was premised on extensive factual findings, including ... the significant regulatory risks involved." The 2nd Circuit also rejected his argument of unequal treatment, saying the plan canceled the interests of all common equity holders, and Harbinger Capital received value for its secured claim, not its common equity interests.

The FCC signed off on an amendment to the proxy agreement that has JPMorgan Chase putting its stake in the former LightSquared into a proxy (see 1512040039). In an order Wednesday in docket 15-126, the agency said it had no objection to an $80,000 per year increase in the proxy agent's annual compensation, to $200,000. The order was signed by the chiefs of the International, Wireless and Wireline bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology.

Dish Network will request arbitration of its retransmission consent dispute with NBCUniversal, Dish said in a news release Friday. “This notice triggers a mandatory 10-day ‘cooling off period' during which DISH and NBCUniversal can continue negotiating and affected programming is required to remain available to DISH customers.” A programmer website run by NBCU now says: “This dispute is in the process of being resolved.” Dish previously sued NBCU over messages on that website (see 1603150053). Dish said it's “committed to reaching a new distribution agreement with NBCUniversal and to not disrupt customers in the process.”

While it waits for permanent approval to operate its StarFire precision farming system mobile earth stations at 1545.9675 and 1545.9775 MHz, Deere is asking the FCC International Bureau for special temporary authority to operate them on a receive-only, non-common carrier basis at those frequencies with a pair of Inmarsat satellites. In a pair of IB filings Thursday (see here and here), Deere said the STA would be in conjunction with downlinks from other Inmarsat geostationary satellites already authorized.