Iridium and Gogo agreed to make Gogo a manufacturer of Iridium Certus aviation terminals and a provider of the L-band in-flight connectivity service, Iridium said Tuesday. It said Gogo has been an Iridium reseller since 2002. It said initial flight trials for Certus aviation applications will be later this year, with commercial service targeting aviation users to start in mid-2019.

Sports bars and DirecTV subscribers aren't challenging the existence of DirecTV's "Sunday Ticket" but rather the agreements that prevent any competition with it, the appellants said in a docket 17-56119 reply brief (in Pacer) filed Friday in the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals. The appellants said it's clear the Supreme Court's 1984 NCAA v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma ruling that NCAA exclusive contracts with broadcasters had apparently anticompetitive consequences holds sway in this case claiming anticompetitive consequences of DirecTV's agreements with the NFL. The appellants are challenging a U.S. district judge's decision last year throwing out consolidated complaints suing the MVPD and NFL over Sunday Ticket programming (see 1804020003). Outside counsel for DirecTV owner AT&T didn't comment Tuesday.

The first deployments of Dish Network's planned narrowband IoT network should start by year-end, with the core network installed this summer, Chairman Charlie Ergen told Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Brendan Carr in meetings recapped in an FCC docket 17-183 posting Friday. Dish said it plans to take delivery of radios for the network by fall and is identifying and acquiring tower sites. It said the first wave of installations of radios on towers in some markets will be done by year's end, with deployments to continue through 2019. The company said stand-alone 5G standardization work will go in parallel, and during completion of phase one of the IoT network, it will be upgraded and expanded to 5G. Ergen has said phase two would involve integrating 5G connectivity (see 1708030043). Dish said that during Q1, it signed lease agreements with more than a dozen tower companies and has been signing agreements with regional and nationwide vendors for site acquisition, installation and other construction services. The satellite-TV provider urged the FCC to act on a petition for rulemaking by the MVDDS (multichannel video distribution and data service) 5G Coalition seeking use of the 12.2-12.7 GHz band for 5G broadband (see 1604260068). Dish is a member of the coalition.

The fee associated with filing multiple C-band receive-only earth station registrations is deterring some operators from registering, Society of Broadcast Engineers and LinkUp Communications representatives told FCC staffers, according to a docket 17-183 posting Thursday. For larger operators with many antennas, those fees could end up in the tens of thousands of dollars, and for small operators even filing fees of hundreds of dollars can be a financial strain, the broadcast interests said. They also said the need to file individual Form 312s for each site is a deterrent since many operators are unfamiliar with the form or don't have the technical staff to do multiple applications in a timely manner. They said a 90-day window is too short and asked it be extended. In a separate ex parte posting Thursday in the docket, Intelsat and SES recapped a meeting with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai at which the companies separately discussed the tools and methods they would use for clearing part of the C-band. The companies also said they again said 100 MHz of C-band could "reasonably" be cleared in 18 to 36 months of an FCC order, but more spectrum "would be substantially more expensive and time consuming." The companies made a similar presentation to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's office (see 1805100028)

President Donald Trump signed a commercial space policy directive Thursday that includes having federal agencies craft a report for the White House on bettering the nation's global competitiveness for space radio frequency spectrum policies, regulation and activities at the ITU and other multilateral forums. The directive said the Transportation Department is to put out a new regulatory system for launch and re-entry activity by "targeting an industry that is undergoing incredible transformation with regulations that have failed to keep up." It said the DOT secretary will consider requiring a single license for all types of commercial space flight launch and re-entry operations "and replacing prescriptive requirements in the process with performance-based criteria." It also said the Commerce Department secretary should review commercial remote sensing regulations for consistency with the directive’s policy and address non-conforming regulations. It gives the commerce secretary 30 days to craft a plan for a "one-stop shop" within the agency for administering and regulating commercial space flight activities. And it ordered the National Space Council to review export licensing regulations affecting commercial space flight activity and deliver recommendations to the White House within 180 days. Satellite Industry Association President Tom Stroup in a statement said that SIA's "delighted with the President’s recognition of the importance of the commercial space business" and it's "strongly encouraged" by the global competitiveness report directive. Commercial Spaceflight Federation Chairman Alan Stern in a statement said commercial space operations have "been innovating ... and competing around the world under the burden of regulations written decades ago, in some cases rooted in the Cold War," but now companies "can foresee a more streamlined legal and administrative regime that will allow us to continue to help transform how Americans access and use space.”

Orbit raising and payload testing for Telesat's phase one low earth orbit (LEO) satellite is done, and it's ready to demonstrate broadband capabilities, Orbit said Tuesday. It said Global Eagle Entertainment, OmniAccess, Optus Satellite and others will take part in live trials. It's evaluating options to expand its LEO constellation beyond current plans for 120 satellites providing global coverage.

Comments are due July 9 on the small satellites authorization streamlining NPRM adopted by the FCC at the commissioners' April meeting (see 1804170038 first Notebook), replies Aug. 8, says a notice in Thursday's Federal Register.

The FCC International Bureau denied U.S. market access for Eutelsat's 133WB satellite. In a letter Tuesday, Satellite Division Chief Jose Albuquerque said there's a likelihood of harmful interference from 133WB to Intelsat's Galaxy 15R, and Intelsat submitted its application for approval to deploy and operate 15R eight months before Eutelsat. Both operators want to provide Ka- and Ku-band service to the U.S. from close orbital slots -- 132.85 degrees west for Eutelsat, 133 degrees west for Intelsat, the bureau said. While 133WB has an earlier ITU protection date than Galaxy 15R, ITU date priority issues aren't relevant to FCC domestic licensing procedures, Albuquerque said. Eutelsat didn't comment.

Any Supreme Court review of Dish Network's de facto control of designated entities SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless would be premature since the issue is before the FCC in an attempt at letting the petitioner DEs fix the control problem, the agency said in a Supreme Court docket 17-1058 respondent brief posted Tuesday. It opposed the DEs' petition for writ of certiorari; experts have said the odds aren't clear of the court taking up the petition regarding agency handling of the AWS-3 auction bidding credits (see 1801290033). The FCC said its negotiations with Dish to fix the control problem are ongoing and could eliminate the practical significance of the case. It said if the FCC sticks to its ineligibility finding at the end of the remanded proceedings, the DEs could then seek juridical review. That the feasibility of an amendment that both sides agree on is questionable isn't a reason to grant review now, the agency said. It waved off the DEs' argument that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit erred in finding the DEs should have anticipated the FCC would find them under de facto Dish control, saying the appellate court applied the test the DEs advocated and failed to show any error in the test the court used. The DEs have complained about not getting FCC feedback on proposed fixes (see 1805070028). The DEs, FCC and Dish didn't comment.

ITU equivalent power flux-density (EPFD) limits are more than enough to protect geostationary orbit (GSO) satellites from nongeostationary orbit (NGSO) satellites, SpaceX said in an FCC docket 16-408 filing posted Thursday. It said once its NGSO constellation is operational, it will likely use 3,300 earth stations over a service area of 110 million square kilometers, slightly less than the planet's land surface. It said worst-case interference from those earth stations for reference antennas would be negligible and even if five similar NGSO systems were operating at the EPFD limit, the aggregate interference "would still be very reasonable." The company said when a SpaceX earth station is in the boresight of a geostationary antenna emitting the maximum planned effective isotropic radiated power toward the GSO arc, the interference would still be negligible. ViaSat said the FCC needs to adopt stricter EPFD limits.