AT&T reached tentative agreement with Communications Workers of America in contract talks covering about 280 DirecTV field services employees in Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico and Oregon, AT&T said in a Friday news release. The tentative agreement places employees into an appendix to an existing labor contract, the company said. CWA didn’t comment. Earlier last week, AT&T and the union ratified an agreement for 400 DirecTV technical service center workers in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota and Tennessee, CWA said Tuesday. Bargaining on other AT&T labor contracts continued. AT&T wireless workers in 36 states have threatened to strike (see 1702090054), as have California and Nevada wireline workers (see 1612190050). An AT&T spokesman said the company resolved a separate dispute with Sacramento-based DirecTV workers who walked off the job after one was terminated (see 1702010027).

With the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals having ruled in an interlocutory appeal in a class-action contract breach complaint on Dish Network dropping Turner and Fox programming in 2014, plaintiffs are asking permission to file an amended complaint that includes claims and allegations in conformity with the 8th Circuit's interpretation. In a motion (in Pacer) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Missouri, plaintiffs said the 8th Circuit ruling (in Pacer) on the lower court's partial grant and partial denial of a Dish motion to dismiss noted they hadn't stated a claim since Dish not crediting the subscribers isn't by itself a breach of good faith and plaintiffs didn't allege the company dropped the programming in bad faith. Plaintiffs said they wanted to amend the claim to allege Dish dropped Turner and Fox programming in bad faith and/or willfully and wantonly breached its customer form agreement. Examples include evading the spirit of the bargain by failing to obtain Fox and Turner programming for which the class members had selected and paid Dish in advance, Dish dishonesty by failing to let subscribers know about the dropped programming, and continuing to market programming packages that included Turner and Fox after the takedown, the plaintiffs said. Dish didn't comment Friday.

Combining the Planet Labs and Terra Bella Technologies satellite networks will let Planet Labs better compete with other satellite imagery and data providers already in operation or expected to be operational soon, it said in a pair of International Bureau transfer of control applications (see here and here) Wednesday as it seeks to buy Google subsidiary Terra Bella. Terra Bella operates the seven-satellite SkySat constellation of imaging satellites and holds one FCC earth station and one satellite license that need to transfer to Planet Labs, it said. Terra Bella holds another earth station license, and the bureau has a pending application before it to assign that license to Kongsberg Satellite Services, Planet Labs said.

SES and Gilat jointly will offer a maritime connectivity platform for small ships as part of SES' Maritime+ service introduced in 2016. In a news release Wednesday, the two said the service's commercial launch will be in April and it uses Gilat's MarineRay 60P Ku-band maritime very small aperture terminal antenna package with SES’ satellite capacity. They said the service will be available first to small yachts and vessels in the Caribbean, followed by the Mediterranean, North Sea and waters throughout Southeast Asia.

In-orbit testing of EchoStar XIX is done and the Ka-band high-throughput satellite was handed over from maker Space Systems Loral, Hughes said in a news release Wednesday. The satellite was launched Dec. 18 from Cape Canaveral, and the handover starts the final testing phase before commercial launch of the HughesNet Gen5 high-speed satellite internet service, Hughes said. The satellite should begin service by the end of Q1, it said.

A SpaceX backlog will push the second launch of Iridium Next broadband satellites from mid-April, as was originally targeted, to mid-June, Iridium said in a news release Wednesday. The SpaceX backlog is due to the September explosion that also delayed the inaugural launch of Next constellation satellites from September to January (see 1701060064). Iridium said the June launch will involve another 10 Next satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and the company is planning six subsequent Next launches, about every two months thereafter, with the Next constellation in orbit by mid-2018. Iridium said it connected its first Next satellite by crosslinks to its global low earth orbit constellation, with that satellite expected to begin providing service within days.

Hughes Network Systems said the FCC shouldn't widely differentiate the bid weights assigned to broadband performance tiers or heavily penalize high-latency services in the planned Connect America Fund Phase II reverse auction for subsidizing fixed broadband/voice services. Satellite provider pricing data show "if the bidding increment per tier is greater than 10%, and if the penalty for high-latency bids is greater than 10%, satellite providers will not be able to compete, even in the highest-cost areas," Hughes said in a filing Tuesday in docket 10-90. Noting it opposed a fiber provider proposal to attach "excessive weights to fiber-based bids in the Gigabit bidder tier," Hughes said the commission should adopt a bid weighting system that provides a maximum 10 percent credit for 25/3 Mbps service, 20 percent credit for 100/20 Mbps service and 25 percent credit for gigabit service. It said the proposal is consistent with several others in the record and with FCC-stated CAF objectives to allocate support in a way “that is technology-neutral and that balances the objectives of maximizing the number of consumers that will be served with the value of higher speeds, higher usage allowances, and lower latency."

Dish Network and plaintiffs in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class-action claim are clashing over attempts to enhance a jury award in favor of the plaintiffs. Dish, by not addressing the FCC's standard for willfulness in its closing arguments, effectively is conceding its TCPA violations were willful and thus the court has the discretion to enhance the jury's award, the plaintiffs said in a trial brief (in Pacer) filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Greensboro, North Carolina. Dish also didn't address a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals precedent that willfulness doesn't require bad purpose or intent and can come from repeated failure to follow the law, the plaintiffs said, saying Dish's argument the company had to have actual knowledge of each element of the claim is unsupported in law. Plaintiffs said Dish's opposition to an enhanced jury award "is based on alternative facts and arguments" the jury rejected, such as that Dish dealer Satellite Systems Network (SSN) was an independent contractor, contrary to the jury's findings. Dish's brief (in Pacer) said the jury verdict against it lacks a legally sufficient evidentiary basis, and it will move for a new trial and file a motion for judgment as a matter of law. Dish said the plaintiffs didn't show that it and SSN agreed to form any agency relationship, that Dish had any authority over SSN's behavior, or that the calls in question were actually TCPA violations. With SSN's five calls to named plaintiff Thomas Krakauer going against Dish's express written instructions to SSN to not call him again, the verdict can't stand, Dish said. The 11th Circuit's 2015 ruling in Lary vs. Trinity Physician made clear the standard for willful or knowing TCPA violations: the plaintiff proving the defendant knew it was doing something that violated the statute, Dish said, saying courts rejected the alternative standard the Krakauer plaintiffs are pushing. A 10-person jury last month awarded class members $400 per TCPA violation and plaintiffs are seeking a court enhancement to increase the award to $1,200 per violation.

SES and its O3b are making their case for spectrum frontiers rewrites (see 1612160019) to FCC officials, with the companies in ex parte filings (see here and here) posted Monday in docket 14-177 recapping bureau and commissioner meetings. The satellite companies said the discussions focused on their proposals in their joint petition for reconsideration of a revision of the earth station siting requirements. The companies also said they emphasized the importance to fixed satellite services of the 40 GHz and 47 GHz bands and encouraged the FCC to allow broader FSS use of the 24.75-25.25 GHz spectrum. At the meetings were O3b Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Suzanne Malloy and Spectrum Director Zach Rosenbaum and SES Senior Legal and Regulatory Counsel Petra Vorwig. They met with Chairman Ajit Pai aide Rachael Bender, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn aide Daudeline Meme, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly aide Erin McGrath, and staffers from the International and Wireless bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology.

Dish Network's civil complaint against the Trinidad operator of websites used to traffic Dish security passcodes can be served by email because the company tried hiring a private investigator, left service with the defendant's sister in Trinidad and tried to call the defendant multiple times on his personal cellphone, U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal of Houston said in an order (in Pacer) Monday. Rosenthal in January ordered that Dish had to file proof of service on the complaint by Feb. 20 or risk dismissal of the case. Filed in November, Dish and co-plaintiffs EchoStar Technologies and NagraStar, both Dish suppliers, said defendant Robert Gittens bought at least 480 separate Internet key sharing (IKS) server passcodes and then resold them repeatedly through www.fladishnet.com, www.lfpsiksdonation.com and www.craftyarts2.com, and Gittens on his Craftyarts2.com consents to U.S. jurisdiction. The companies ask for injunctive relief, an order allowing Dish to take possession and destroy all IKS server passcodes and other piracy software and an order transferring ownership of the three websites to Dish, plus damages. Gittens didn't comment Tuesday.