Intelsat and Sky Perfect JSAT agreed to jointly put up a satellite with C-band and high throughput Ku-band capacity to serve mobility and broadband connectivity demands in the Asia-Pacific region, Intelsat said in a news release Wednesday. Horizons 3e is expected to launch in the second half of 2018, operate at 169 degrees east and round out Intelsat's EpicNG global platform, Intelsat said. Horizons 3e would be the fourth satellite jointly owned by JSAT and Intelsat, following Horizons-1, Horizons-2 and Intelsat 15/JCSAT-85.

The satellite industry is in disagreement about what it says are allowable rise over thermal limits that could come with air-to-ground mobile broadband in the 14-14.5 GHz band. While Qualcomm has said such aeronautical service broadband could safely increase the rise over thermal -- the ratio between the total interference and thermal noise -- by as much as 1 percent, the safe figure that would protect fixed satellite service (FSS) uplinks is actually 0.33 percent, Intelsat and SES said in a joint FCC filing posted Tuesday in docket 13-114. The companies said the satellite industry previously indicated FSS interference from all noise sources should be capped at a 1 percent increase noise floor, going by ITU-Radiocommunication (ITU-R) recommendations, but those calculations didn't take into account additional secondary services in parts of the 14-14.5 GHz band -- tracking and data relay satellite service and federal fixed and mobile services. SpaceX in a joint letter in October with Qualcomm said it thinks Qualcomm's commitments would protect SpaceX's nongeostationary satellite system. But those calculations also failed to take into account those secondary users in the band, said Intelsat and SES. "That pact cannot change the laws of physics, the Table of Allocations or the ITU-R Recommendations." Thus any authorization of an air-to-ground mobile service in that band should follow ITU-R recommendations and give it no more than 0.33 percent rise in thermal noise, they said. Qualcomm didn't comment Wednesday. In a 2014 filing in the docket, the company said the transmit power levels already proposed by the FCC will ensure the AMS rise over thermal limits is less than 0.5 percent.

The Supreme Court shot down a pair of appeals by Dish Network and AT&T's DirecTV on how states tax their services versus how cable subscribers are taxed. The justices denied the direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) companies' petitions for certiorari Monday after meeting in conference Friday. The companies sued Tennessee Commissioner of Revenue Richard Roberts and the Massachusetts Department of Revenue over those states' tax structures: Tennessee in 2003 over its pay-TV sales tax regime, which gives cable subscribers a tax exemption on the first $15 of their bills but no such break to satellite-TV subscribers, and Massachusetts seven years later after the state enacted a satellite-only excise tax. The DBS companies filed writs of certiorari after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sided with the state in an appeal and the Tennessee Supreme Court declined to review the case (see 1510220016).

Iridium now expects the first launches of its Next satellite constellation in April, with the constellation to be fully operational by end of 2017, CEO Matt Desch said Thursday, announcing Q3 results. The company previously said it expected the first Next launch to come in December (see 1510230011). The new launch timeframe is due to "an updated delivery schedule" from Thales Alenia Space, Desch said.

Scripps Network Interactive and SES signed a deal to expand and move Scripps' North American distribution platform to a pair of SES space stations near the center of the orbital arc over North America, the satellite company said in a news release Wednesday. According to SES, SES-1 at 101 degrees west will deliver Scripps's HD content, while SES-3 at 103 degrees west will help in distribution of standard definition feeds.

Eutelsat ordered a high-throughput satellite from Thales Alenia Space as part of its effort to bring broadband connectivity services to Africa, it said in a news release Wednesday. The satellite, using Thales' new Spacebus Neo platform, will launch in 2019 with the aim of providing at least 75 Gbps of capacity across a 65-spotbeam network, Eutelsat said. The satellite follows a joint announcement by Eutelsat and Facebook earlier this month that they plan to use Spacecom's AMOS-6 satellite to jointly provide broadband in much of Sub-Saharan Africa (see 1510050037).

Harmonic continues to see “encouraging signs” that the Ultra HD market “is slowly gaining momentum,” CEO Patrick Harshman said on a Tuesday earnings call. Ultra HD TV sales “continue to grow” and H.265-compatible set-tops “are starting to be deployed,” he said. “We expect this market momentum to continue to build, while we continue to demonstrate superior picture quality at lower bit rates than our closest competitors, which in turn is enabling us to assemble a growing pipeline of new Ultra HD opportunities.” Harmonic’s partnership with NASA to launch North America’s first linear Ultra HD channel “is generating quite a bit of interest among our customers,” he said. The channel is available as a test and is on track to go “fully live” Sunday, he said.

Garmin continues to voice worries on GPS interference from operations in adjacent bands. General Counsel Andrew Etkind met with FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly and with Commissioner Ajit Pai chief of staff Matthew Berry, the GPS company said in ex parte filings posted Wednesday in docket 12-340 (see here and here). Garmin said Etkind talked up a proposed Transportation Department study of adjacent band interference -- which was heavily criticized by LightSquared, which wants to operate a wireless broadband network in adjacent spectrum (see 1510160022) -- and provided copies of GPS Innovation Alliance testimony submitted earlier this month in a House Communications Subcommittee hearing on improving federal spectrum systems. In that testimony, the GPSIA said using satellite spectrum for broadband poses big technical challenges since mobile broadband uplink transmissions "can be billions of times stronger" than low-power transmissions such as used by a Global Navigation Satellite System, and "attempts to attribute GNSS interference issues mainly to poor receiver design are misguided." GPSIA also said receiver regulation would "impede innovation," and "a more straightforward approach" would be to group similar spectrum uses together -- "a 'zoning' approach to spectrum management as opposed to a 'good fences make good neighbors' approach that requires the FCC to engage in extensive rule making and standards development." For GPS, GPSIA said, that would mean "avoiding authorization of high powered uses in this band now or in the future."

SES and travel industry content and connectivity company Global Eagle Entertainment signed a set of multiyear multitransponder agreements for Global Eagle to get additional bandwidth through SES for its services, SES said in a news release Tuesday. SES said Global Eagle already was adding bandwidth on six of its satellites, and the agreements also will see it providing teleport services and ground infrastructure. Global Eagle also will have access to the high-throughput satellite capacity on SES-12, SES-14 and SES-15, which are to be launched in 2017, it said.

Gilat Satellite Networks will publicly unveil Architecture for SkyEdge II-c, its distributed architecture for the high-throughput satellite (HTS) market, this week at the China Satellite Conference in Beijing, the company said in a news release Tuesday. It said the programmable, cloud-based architecture allows networks of any size, using wide-beam and HTS, to deliver managed services in hosted or virtual network business models.