Intelsat is launching its Flex service that will tie its terrestrial Intelsat One broadband network and its forthcoming Epic satellite constellation together to provide broadband service for airline passengers. The first of the Epic satellites is expected to launch in early 2016, it said. Flex will become available as that satellite fleet becomes operational, the company said.

More consumers will get AT&T's GigaPower wireline broadband -- and without any public subsidies from the Connect America Fund -- if AT&T's DirecTV merger is allowed to go through, executives of both companies told FCC officials, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 14-90. AT&T's GigaPower service will extend to an additional 2 million locations within four years of the close of the deal, and AT&T periodically will give updates to the FCC on the status of that broadband rollout that show that work is being done without CAF money, company officials said. AT&T also continues to stand by its plan to offer a 6 Mbps stand-alone broadband service for three years after closing, company officials said. That's slower than the FCC-set benchmark speed 25 Mbps that some opponents of the deal had tried to set as a condition for the merger, but 6 Mbps "would be more widely available than a service of higher speeds," the company said. AT&T also attempted to rebut arguments about another proposed condition setting up how it would market that stand-alone broadband service -- a requirement that "would only prevent AT&T from adapting to market conditions and making the sales experience as efficient and responsive to customer needs as it can," it said.

Iridium satellite services and gear are being distributed in South Korea, the satellite company said in a Thursday news release, saying it signed a distribution deal with South Korean navigation and communications equipment company Arion Communication. Arion will resell such products as Iridium’s Pilot wireless service for ships and its Go! Smartphone. The company’s Certus broadband service, which will come from its NEXT satellite network set to begin going into orbit later this year, will follow, Iridium said.

Hughes Network Systems is pitching its own specifications for the latency tests to check the ability of the rural broadband network build-out envisioned by Connect America Fund Phase II to be used for such purposes as VoIP. Those specifications include a Web page loading time standard of five seconds, ensuring “all technologies providing speeds at or above CAF Phase II requirements are able to meet the requirement,” Hughes said in an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 10-90. Hughes’ proposed specifications also include an R-Factor score of at least 52. R-Factor is a measure of VoIP call quality. Going with 52 “will allow competition by providers using the current terrestrial technologies (such as fiber, cable, and high speed DSL) as well as other technologies (such as LTE or fixed satellite services),” Hughes said. Hughes’ filing comes just days after a telecom networking equipment company proposed an R-Factor score of 80 as a threshold and questioned the methodology Hughes previously had discussed (see 1505290037).

Cogent Communications is renewing its request that the FCC require AT&T to keep broadband interconnection points clear as part of its proposed takeover of DirecTV. "The quality of [consumers' broadband] connection ... depends entirely on AT&T's interconnections with the edge providers that provide such content or their intermediaries that deliver the content AT&T customers select," the Internet service provider said in comments posted Wednesday in docket 14-90. Ensuring AT&T's network can handle such traffic won't require unlimited network augmentation, merely additional ports -- costing $10,000 per 10 Gbps port -- and slightly more space and power to run them, Cogent said, saying AT&T not committing to some kind of congestion elimination plan "calls into question their pledge to ensure unimpeded broadband service."

BT Group renewed and expanded services on three Intelsat satellites, spanning the Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America regions, said a news release from Intelsat. BT will leverage capacity from three of Intelsat’s leading satellite neighborhoods to distribute programming for BBC World Service, the release said. BT will have access to Intelsat’s teleport facility in Napa, California, along with the company’s terrestrial network, IntelsatOne, it said.

The FCC set deadlines for comments on LightSquared's bid for regulatory approval of its emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the transfer of its licenses and authorizations to its reorganized self. The FCC on Monday issued a 10-page public notice in IB docket 15-126. The notice gives a brief rundown of the reorganizational changes for the company, including ownership of its common stock and makeup of the new board. LightSquared said it also wants a declaratory ruling from the FCC permitting foreign ownership of its U.S.-organized parent company, New LightSquared. Foreign firms would hold indirect equity interests in New LightSquared of 40 percent to 70 percent. The deadline for initial comments is July 1, with the deadline for responses and opposition to petitions being July 13. Responses to those responses, and to oppositions, are due by July 20.

Adtran joined Hughes Network Systems and ViaSat in lobbying the FCC to back a proposal that eligibility for receiving Connect America Fund Phase II money for broadband not favor any particular platform. The telecom networking company went a step further Wednesday in a filing posted in docket 10-90, spelling out a minimum threshold R-Factor standard of low latency it thinks would be acceptable. R-Factor measures VoIP call quality. Neither Hughes nor ViaSat specified any minimum value. Adtran said that minimum should be an R-value “of at least 80 (as) anything else and some increasing percentage of users express dissatisfaction with the quality of a voice call.” Adtran also raised some red flags with Hughes’ proposal for the methodology for testing the broadband service's usefulness in VoIP. Hughes declined to comment Friday.

DirecTV added a 12th satellite to its orbiting constellation, announcing the successful launch of DirecTV-15, covering the continental U.S. and Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. DirecTV-15 and Sky Mexico’s Sky-Mexico-1 were put into orbit from the European Spaceport in French Guiana by Arianespace. The satellites are expected to begin operating in the third quarter, and DirecTV said they will reinforce its existing constellation and bulk up its HD capacity. The company said the Airbus-built DirecTV-15 satellite will operate in all frequency bands. DirecTV has part ownership of Mexican pay-TV company Sky Mexico, and the Orbital ATK-built Sky-Mexico-1 -- that company’s first owned and operated satellite -- will give that company more HD capacity and allow direct-to-home broadcast to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, it said.

The ITU's slow pace of regulatory change was a frustration to panelists at an FCBA event Thursday marking the first launch 50 years ago of a commercial communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit, Intelsat 1. The ITU is responsible for overseeing the assigning of satellite orbits and coordinating global use of radio spectrum. “You may not always agree with" the ITU, said Brian Fontes, National Emergency Number Association CEO. “You may certainly not agree with its time schedule." The body's existence was "a step in the right direction" from not having anything to coordinate frequency use globally, he said. While the speed of technology change and commercial pressures are faster than the ITU moves, “It’s the only system we have,” said David Leive, ex-Intelsat general counsel. The ITU is slow moving, said Internet lawyer Henry Goldberg of Goldberg Godles. He lauded PanAmSat co-founder Rene Anselmo, who helped break the monopoly held by Intelsat: PanAmSat "was a huge success.” The ITU had no immediate comment. “The international consensus style and the U.S. style of encouraging technology don’t really mesh very well” in the ITU, Goldberg said, saying “they work out eventually.”