Given the pending launch of the first satellites in Iridium's Next constellation (see 1606140026), the need for and public benefit of more spectrum is growing, the satellite company told FCC International Bureau staff as it pushed its proposal for sharing the 1616-1618.725 MHz band with Globalstar (see 1504230054), said an ex parte filing Wednesday in RM-11685. Iridium said it told the bureau that Next's design is intended to protect radio astronomy services, so any dismissal of company's petition based on concern about its effect on RAS "would be premature."

The FCC International Bureau laid out its goals for processing times for earth station applications. In a public notice Tuesday, the bureau's satellite division said applications for an initial earth station authorization or an authorization modification will be put on public notice within 45 days of confirmation of receipt of payment and acted on within 60 days after close of the comment period. It also said applications for initial registration of receive-only earth stations or for registration modifications will be put on public notice within 30 days and acted on within 45 days, and applications for special temporary authority for earth stations will be put on public notice within 14 days and acted on within 30 days. Requests that don't require public notice will like be acted on within 30 days, bureau said. The bureau said it committed to setting processing-time guidelines as part of its Part 25 order in December (see 1512170036).

The first satellites that will make up Iridium's Next constellation have finished assembly and testing and are being prepared for shipping to the launch site at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, with the first launch to be Sept. 12, Iridium said in a news release Tuesday. Iridium said while the first two Next satellites are being shipped to Vandenberg to be launched by SpaceX, the remaining eight satellites are being completed and will be shipped two at a time to the launch site. The entire 10-satellite constellation is scheduled for launch by late 2017, it said. Assembly, integration and testing were done by Thales Alenia Space and subcontractor Orbital ATK at the latter's manufacturing site in Arizona, Iridium said.

SES and O3b Networks jointly finished the first O3b managed services installation for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service Office in American Samoa, SES said in a news release Tuesday. The station will provide tropical weather alerts and cyclone warning information for much of the Pacific, with O3b providing a low latency link between it and the primary Pacific National Weather Service center in Hawaii, SES said.

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.