That commissioners got a chance to vote on the FCC's latest Open-Market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (Orbit) Act report to Congress raises the question of why similar agency reports don't follow the same procedure, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said. The FCC issued its 17th annual status report on the privatization status of Inmarsat, Intelsat and New Skies Tuesday. It was unanimously approved by commissioners, with O'Rielly and Commissioner Ajit Pai issuing separate statements. The report said the FCC over the past year has taken part in numerous international satellite coordination negotiations with Russia as Intelsat's licensing administration, while the company signed operational arrangements with satellite operators licensed by seven nations, which will in turn lead to coordination agreements between the U.S. and the pertinent foreign administrations. The FCC said during the past year it also granted a number of Inmarsat earth station licenses and approved other earth stations' authority to communicate with satellites from New Skies, an Intelsat spin-off. Several past reports have said Inmarsat and Intelsat have fully transitioned to privatized operations. Pai has said the Orbit Act reports have outlived their usefulness (see 1506100062) and he repeated that Tuesday in a brief statement, saying "There's no need to reinvent the wheel." O'Rielly said he proposed a similar process for all delegated authority matters before the agency: "Alas, this reasonable process reform has been summarily rejected to date."

Intelsat 31, which will provide direct-to-home service, launched Thursday, the company said in a news release. It said the Ku- and C-band satellite will provide redundancy to DirecTV's Latin American distribution. The satellite will collocate with Intelsat 30 at 96 degrees west and is expected to have a service life of more than 15 years, the company said.

While DirecTV's scaled-down request for complaints from the FTC Consumer Sentinel system is more proportional to the needs of the case, the agency might need to produce random samples of complaints from companies now no longer part of DirecTV's request, said U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James of San Francisco in an order (in Pacer) Thursday. The judge said the agency and the direct broadcast satellite company must confer to determine which companies' complaints the FTC will produce and an appropriate sample size for each company. DirecTV and the FTC have been fighting over consumer complaint documentation (see 1603090012 and 1603040021) as part of the commission's 2015 lawsuit against DirecTV for allegedly not properly communicating early cancelation fee terms to subscribers (see 1503110042). DirecTV had sought Consumer Sentinel data on 10 multichannel video programming distributors, with the court directing the parties to agree on a more limited production. In her order, James said DirecTV now is seeking all 231,802 complaints for Charter Communications, Comcast and Dish Network, while the FTC was proposing samples for three companies of DirecTV's choosing, and that the FTC sampling proposal "more closely comports with [Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26] demand for proportionality."

With plans to create an earth station network for its ViaSat-2 satellite expected to launch in Q1 2017, ViaSat filed more than 30 FCC International Bureau applications Tuesday seeking authority to operate 4.1-meter gateway-type earth stations in the Ka band to communicate with it. ViaSat said the earth stations would operate in the 17.7-19.3 GHz and 19.7-20.2 GHz downlink and 27.5-29.1 and 29.5-30 GHz uplink frequencies. It also said an additional four locations for 4.1-meter antenna sites are being finalized, with applications to come, as will applications for two 9.1-meter sites.

The last details of a $35 million SiriusXM settlement of class-action lawsuits alleging violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act should be finalized by the month's end, said a status report (in Pacer) filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Newport News, Virginia. That settlement originally had been expected to be complete by June 10, but now a motion for preliminary approval should be ready by June 30, counsel for the plaintiffs in Hooker v. Sirius XM said. Similar federal class-action suits are filed in courts in California, Illinois and Florida. The status report said the motion for preliminary approval will include a form of proposed notice of settlement of the class plus an outline of the system architecture that the satellite radio company will require for the dialing systems of some of its call center vendors when they call mobile phones. SiriusXM in April announced it signed a memorandum of understanding to settle the suits, with the settlement having the company offering participating class members three months of its Select service for free.

Iridium's Certus L-band satellite broadband service will be commercially available in Q2 2017, the satellite company said in a news release Tuesday. The company said Certus eventually is aimed at supporting a variety of services targeting particularly maritime, land mobile, aviation and government applications, and will be based on Iridium's Next low earth orbit constellation scheduled to begin launching this summer. Once fully deployed, Certus will offer speeds of 1.4 Mbps, Iridium said.

Dish Network hopes to roll out a new 3.7-meter-diameter antenna earth station to operate with 17/24 GHz broadcast satellite service (BSS) systems by October. In an FCC International Bureau filing Monday, Dish said it needed its blanket earth station license modified to add up to 25,000 3.7-meter receive-only earth stations to the 4.5-meter and 6.35-meter antennas already authorized and to extend the required date of construction completion and commencement of operation by six months, from June 30 to Dec. 30. Dish said earth station design and manufacturing is still catching up with the recent availability of 17/24 GHz BSS service, thus necessitating the additional time while it and its vendors find the components needed for receive-only BSS. It also said the smaller antenna type "will facilitate expeditious deployment of 17 GHz receive-only earth stations" that could then support video and data services on a multi-use terrestrial network, potentially leading to more mobile broadband service options.

Zetta Jet and ViaSat signed a deal for ViaSat to provide in-flight connectivity to the airline's Bombardier Global business aircraft, ViaSat said in a news release Monday. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a bid by a direct broadcast satellite marketing firm for a stay of enforcement of the $610,560 damages it was ordered to pay DirecTV while its appeal of those damages is decided (see 1605040020). In the order (in Pacer) Friday, the 4th Circuit three-judge panel said only it denied Exclaim Marketing's motion. But in its memorandum (in Pacer) in opposition last month, DirecTV argued the U.S. District Court in New Bern, North Carolina, previously denied Exclaim's request for relief and that should stand since the motion wasn't based on any new facts or changed circumstances, that there was no basis for a stay since Exclaim hadn't posted a full bond and that minus that bond Exclaim had the burden of proposing an alternative means of securing the judgment, which it failed to do. Exclaim sued DirecTV in 2015, alleging deliberate interference in Exclaim's business relationships with independent satellite dealers, with the court ultimately overturning the jury's verdict that was in Exclaim's favor and awarding DirecTV its trademark infringement counterclaim. Exclaim didn't comment Monday.

As Deere plans to introduce new mobile earth terminals for its StarFire precision farming system, the GPS company is asking the FCC International Bureau approval to receive downlinks from various Inmarsat satellites. In a pair of IB filings Thursday (see here and here), Deere requested special temporary and permanent authority to operate as many as 700,000 SF6000 and SF5050 terminals in the L band with Inmarsat 3F2, 3F3, 3F4, 4F1 and 4F3.