The FCC international Bureau granted U.S. market access to SES' Dutch-licensed NSS-6 spacecraft, it said Wednesday. SES said the satellite, launched in 2002, is being relocated and will provide Ku-band service in Alaska, Hawaii, the Northwestern U.S., the Pacific Ocean and East Asia.

NTCH seeks rehearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's February decision largely siding with the FCC as the unsuccessful bidder sought an undoing of the agency's Auction 96 (see 2002210044). Its petition Wednesday (docket 18-1242, in Pacer) said since the FCC dismissed its application for review on procedural grounds and on its merits, the panel or the court en banc should review the action on its merits. At the least, look at the issue the FCC denied -- whether the auction amount guarantee by Dish Network influenced the auction's configuration, the smaller company asked. The FCC didn't comment Thursday.

Though space will become increasingly crowded, the business case for space situational awareness services is hazy, Northern Sky Research analyst Dallas Kasaboski blogged Tuesday: Geostationary and non-geostationary orbit operators haven't voiced need for such services, with NGSO operators seemingly seeing the risk more cheaply handled in other ways, he said.

5G and weather stakeholders should talk so there's better understanding of issues like fifth-generation installation density, how quickly those terrestrial transmission signals fall off outside their main channels and how those will affect passive weather monitoring via satellite, Aerospace Corp. Senior Project Leader David Lubar said on a webinar Tuesday. Of millimeter wave bands used for weather observation, 23.6-24 GHz and 36-37 GHz are adjacent to bands to be used for 5G, he said. Passive earth and atmospheric sensing can't be done using alternate bands, he said. Passive measurements wouldn't know the signal levels being detected aren't correct, corrupting the weather data, he said. It's not clear how out-of-band emissions (OOBE), especially unidentified contamination, might affect meteorological products, he said. A radio receiver and satellite-based radiometer work differently, so receiver protection techniques aren't applicable to satellites, he said. The 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference limits on 5G base stations in the 24 GHz band will be adopted by most nations, though Europe didn't consider them stringent enough and moved forward by several years the phase-in of those limits, he said. Rather than OOBE limits, a possible solution could be time-sharing of the spectrum, Lubar said.

Satellite-connected IoT devices will reach 10 million by 2025, from 2.7 million in 2019, Omdia forecast. Satellite IoT revenue is expected to grow from $233 million in 2019 to $544 million by 2025. The researcher said Monday that within 15 to 20 years, the distinction between a satellite IoT device and a terrestrial wireless IoT device will end, with mobile connectivity roaming onto satellite networks when out of range of terrestrial infrastructure.

Threats to satellites are growing as nations and non-state actors increasingly get counterspace capabilities, with jamming and spoofing"becoming part of the part of the everyday arsenal" for some nations, the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Aerospace Security Project reported Monday. Without strong repercussions, jamming and spoofing activities "could gradually become normalized," it said.

TV news consumption on Sling TV climbed 121% since Feb. 24, said Dish Network Thursday. Sling is offering its “news-rich” Blue streaming service for free through April 5, amid the pandemic.

Investors' satellite communications bearishness in recent months, with operators' stocks down, points to shareholders looking for "unique" business cases with little product differentiation and high commoditization, Northern Sky Research analyst Gagan Agrawal blogged Tuesday. He said price wars are most likely, but operators need to focus more on new products and on mergers and acquisitions, or scaling fleet sizes.

FCC earth station siting rules need guidance that encourages collocation of gateway earth stations in fewer areas, Hughes representatives told International Bureau staff, said a docket 17-172 posting Tuesday. Hughes said the agency should allow use of a terrain model with ample granularity, akin to NASA's shuttle radar topography mission model. The company said when a new earth station's interference zone falls squarely in the interference zone of a grandfathered earth station, the new station's population shouldn't be counted. It said shielding shouldn't be required. If an upper microwave flexible use licensee doesn't raise coordination objections during the coordination process, it shouldn't be able to raise objections during the earth station licensing process, the satellite company said.

Ray Baum's Act addresses how the FCC adjusts its regulatory fee schedule but doesn't give the agency authority to charge those fees to foreign-licensed satellite systems, Eutelsat, Inmarsat, Telesat, ViaSat, Kepler and OneWeb representatives told International Bureau and Office of the Managing Director staffers. That's according to a docket 19-105 posting Tuesday. The fees are proposed as part of the FY 2020 fee schedule (see 1912090053). Most pay "substantial" fees to their home jurisdictions, and might respond to the FCC by raising their own fees, the satellite operators said. They said market access grants aren't licenses, so charging foreign-flagged systems wouldn't be consistent with how the FCC charges U.S.-licensed systems. Most had a similar meeting with the Office of General Counsel.