A particularly large number of earth station licenses are to expire this year, Fletcher Heald said Wednesday in a blog post. Since the FCC International Bureau doesn't notify licensees and registrants of license expiration dates, it said, they should review their authorizations to make sure any applications are properly filed.

Gilat and AirMedia Group signed a deal to provide in-flight connectivity services over mainland China, Gilat said in a news release Tuesday. It said the service will use its own high-throughput satellite platform alongside ChinaSatcom's Ka-band capacity to be launched this year, and should begin commercial rollout in early 2018. Gilat China General Manager Jun Xiang said the company is in talks with several other potential Chinese and international partners about similar in-flight connectivity ventures in China.

In the five weeks since AT&T's launch of DirecTV Now, the streaming service was holding up better than competing services in download trends, said a Tuesday UBS report. AT&T beefed up marketing efforts for DirecTV Now in mid-December, advertising that the $35-per-month promo rate would end Jan. 9, but extending the free trial to 30 days from seven. That allowed its iPad ranking to hold up “better than peers” -- including Verizon’s Go90, Sling TV and Showtime, the analysts said. They expect the DirecTV Now app and content to soon add DVR service and multistream capability. The primary issues facing DirecTV Now are user experience and quality as the service scales, said the report. DirecTV Now's success could have “far-reaching implications for the industry, potentially accelerating fixed/wireless convergence in the U.S.,” it said, as management uses the streaming product to gain wireless share in 2017 and unveils new bundles that could “change the trend in postpaid handsets.”

The Gray/Dish Network retransmission dispute likely won't end quickly, judging by the tone of comments by Gray, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker emailed investors Tuesday. Dish probably has 2 million Gray viewers, but the financial impact to the broadcaster likely will be mitigated by the fact most of its reverse compensation subscription base is variable, so it won't owe the full reverse comp to networks if Gray stops receiving retrans revenue from Dish, she wrote. She said Dish likely could face subscriber losses well in excess of 7 percent in Gray markets in this dispute, and Gray could snag a sizable amount of Dish-related retrans when those lost Dish subscribers move to other multichannel video programming distributors. Gray, announcing the carriage disruption to have taken effect 7 p.m. Tuesday, said Dish "has refused after many months to even begin negotiating carriage terms that are consistent with those that Dish has provided to other broadcasters and cable channels." Pointing to other recent disruptions involving Gray stations or other broadcasters, Gray said it didn't expect the blackout to end soon. In a statement, Dish said it was still working to reach a deal before the contract expiration, and the broadcaster was "simply trying to use consumers as pawns in an effort to gain leverage for their own economic benefit.”

Iridium's claims that Ligado's proposed broadband terrestrial network is a significant interference risk to its operation in adjacent spectrum (see 1612140061) are based on a flawed model and don't make sense since its ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) operations would better protect Iridium than its satellite-only operations, Ligado said in a filing to be posted Tuesday in FCC docket 11-109. It included a 33-page technical paper in response to Iridium's technical analysis, with Ligado challenging the propagation models Iridium used. Ligado said Iridium has no legal basis for pushing for protection since its mobile satellite service (MSS) downlinks are secondary to Ligado's ancillary terrestrial service, and said the FCC had made clear in different proceedings on Iridium MSS operations and adjacent-band operations that the downlinks were secondary. Ligado said if it didn't get FCC approval to launch ATC services in the lower 10 MHz uplink channel, it would use the band for MSS service to the maximum power and out-of-band emission limits in its license, which are substantially higher than the ATC limits in its application. Ligado said Iridium's analysis ignores the real-world operational and regulatory environment such as the millions of mobile earth station devices currently deployed in the L-band at higher power levels than Ligado's proposed 0.2 watt user terminals. If Iridium's interference analysis was correct, Ligado said, those millions of devices "would be destroying Iridium's service," and that they're not illustrates the flaws in that company's analysis that the FCC should dismiss as "facially absurd ... confabulated spectrum concerns." Iridium didn't comment.

In-flight and maritime connectivity company Global Eagle Entertainment bought the Ku-band payload on an SES satellite and will rebrand the satellite as Eagle-1, GEE said in a news release Friday. It's aimed at boosting capacity for its North American, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico customers, the company said.

Globalstar plans to move all its second-generation satellites to eight orbital planes while keeping its eight remaining first-generation satellites in their current orbital configurations, the company told the FCC International Bureau in a notification Thursday. An FCC modification order in 2011 permitted Globalstar to operate a 32-satellite configuration -- using first- and second-generation satellites -- over eight orbital planes plus a separate 16-satellite configuration using solely its first-generation satellites, the company said. Since that order, multiple first-generation satellites have been retired, the company said, saying it will do the reconfiguration over about 11 weeks, with the work starting about Jan. 22. The FCC last month approved Globalstar's proposal for terrestrial use of 11.5 MHz of its licensed satellite spectrum for low-power mobile broadband (see 1612230060).

Administrative oversight caused Ligado to inadvertently let the license lapse for its MSAT-2 satellite, the company said in a pair of FCC International Bureau filings (see here and here) Thursday, asking for reinstatement of its license and special temporary authority to operate in the meantime. Ligado said since its original authorization lapsed in 2011, it filed requests for five years straight asking that its license be modified for an additional year, with the most recent being until Dec. 31, 2016. The company said it and its counsel are taking steps to make sure such oversight doesn't happen again, such as instituting a deadline management system.

Dish Network's stance that neither the Telephone Consumer Protection Act nor the Federal Tort Claims Act spells out injunctive relief that involves other than traditional, four-part equitable test standards is hardly radical, Dish said in a motion (in Pacer) for leave Wednesday. It asked to be able reply to the DOJ's and FTC's proposed responsive conclusions of law filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Illinois, in advance of the second phase of the Dish robocall violations trial there (see 1701050045). The company said in its proposed reply that DOJ/FTC haven't contested its showing the injunction they seek would disproportionately harm the company, while harms caused by TCPA and Telemarketing Sales Rule violations "are not substantial." At most, "a modest civil penalty is warranted, because Dish's participation in the telemarketing violations was minimal" since the vast majority of the violations were by a handful of retailers, it said. The federal agencies didn't comment Thursday.

Comments on an FCC proposal to quit acting as accounting authority between earth or coast stations and ships engaged in international maritime mobile communications are due in 60 days, replies in 90 days, said a notice to be published in Friday's Federal Register. The FCC issued a second Further NPRM earlier this month (see 1701030002).