The NFL Sunday Ticket has increased the number of televised NFL games, enhanced competition and helped create what even the antitrust complaint against the league and DirecTV admits is huge NFL viewership, said defendant appellees DirecTV and the NFL in a docket 17-56119 answering brief (in Pacer) filed Friday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They said the plaintiffs' challenge of the NFL/DirecTV distribution agreement and the NFL/individual teams' license agreement don't account for the Sports Broadcasting Act's protections exempting from antitrust scrutiny the NFL's licensing of its member teams' broadcast rights. The appellees also said it's well-established precedent that exclusive distributorships are presumed to be legal. They also said the existence of free over-the-air NFL broadcasts precludes exercise of market power. The appellants are challenging a lower court's dismissal last year of their complaint (see 1804020003). Appellant counsel didn't comment Monday.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that Ace American Insurance has no duty to defend or indemnify Dish Network in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) telemarketing lawsuit (see 1802220063) puts Colorado "out of step" with every other state where the issue has come up and "sows discord" on doctrine, Dish said in a docket 17-1140 petition (in Pacer) for a panel rehearing and rehearing en banc posted Friday. Dish said the panel decision makes it impermissible under Colorado law to insure statutory liquidated damages for even purely accidental violations, creating "an unnecessary windfall" for insurers that long have recognized they need to include TCPA exclusions in insurance policies in order to deny coverage. It said Ace's argument that Colorado public policy barring insurance coverage for some types of wrongful coverage included for TCPA statutory damages has been repeatedly raised in many states by insurers, but was always rejected until the 10th Circuit, that result being "confusion and disruption." Ace outside counsel didn't comment Monday.

Analytical Space, through its RaDiX cubesat scheduled to launch May 1, plans to test laser communications data downlinks, according to an FCC Office of Engineering and Technology experimental license issued Thursday. The optical receiver station is in Fairbanks, Alaska, the company said.

The FCC likely will again deny Dish Network and designated entities SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless bidding credits, and Dish likely will have to again head to court, New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin emailed investors Thursday evening. He said despite the loosened Dish control of the DEs (see 1804040004), the company faces "seemingly anti-Dish stance" by the FCC. If the agency rules against the Dish DEs, they likely will sue, with the issue ultimately not getting resolved until 2020 or 2021, he said. If the DEs succeed, the question becomes whether the DEs can reclaim the relinquished AWS-3 spectrum licenses without any further payments, he said.

ThinKom Solutions and Comsat jointly tested and validated continuous high-speed satellite communications in a moving vehicle under a range of conditions, they said Thursday. They said the 5,000-mile demonstration used a roof-mounted ThinKom phased-array satellite antenna on an SUV, while Comsat provided connectivity using commercial Ku-band satellites and terrestrial networks. They said the vehicle will be in Washington over the coming months for demos.

Despite hype about connected car market opportunities for satellite-based flat panel antennas, that FPA market "remains elusive and still many years away from being realized," Northern Sky Research analyst Dallas Kasaboski blogged Wednesday. Successful deployment for FPA manufacturers could be lucrative, but the use cases are poorly defined and the technology and price points haven't reached levels that would open the door to widespread adoption, he said. Other land-mobile FPA applications like connected buses and trainers are further along, he said, estimating cumulative equipment revenues for land-mobile FPA applications to hit $94 million over the next decade.

The FCC should make clear in a policy statement that earth stations in motion operations can be licensed in spectrum currently used by Iridium when an ESIM applicant demonstrates those operations won't have a significant effect on Iridium's licensed and actual feeder link operations. That's the position taken by Inmarsat, SES and ViaSat in a docket 17-95 filing posted Wednesday. It said the record makes clear ESIM operations can share spectrum with Iridium's feeder link operations. The three said when such a showing can't be made, the applicant could pursue an ESIM license through good faith coordination requirements and under Section 25.258 of FCC rules on non-geostationary orbit feeder link stations and geostationary services in the 29.25-29.5 GHz band. The companies said such an approach "would ensure that unused spectrum is not held hostage to an otherwise protracted coordination process." Iridium didn't comment.

Pointing to unspecified NOAA "restrictions," SpaceX cut short live video streaming of a Friday Falcon 9 rocket launch carrying a set of Iridium Next satellites. The company emailed it stopped the video streaming just before second-stage engine shutdown. It said it was "working with NOAA to address these restrictions" with the goal of resuming live streaming from orbit in the future. The video feed from the company's publicized "Starman" launch in February was potentially in violation of NOAA rules on remote space sensing systems (see 1803160037). NOAA didn't comment Friday. Iridium said Friday the company passed a million subscribers. It said the $3 billion constellation should be complete later this year, with three more launches planned.

O3b filed a $1.67 million bond with the FCC for 26 additional satellites operating in two more frequencies and for two more orbital planes to be added to its constellation. The bond, posted Wednesday, says the company -- part of SES -- commits to having at least 50 percent of its satellites authorized by the agency in operation no later than Feb. 28, 2024. The O3b request -- for additional satellites to be granted U.S. market access, but that number reduced from what it originally had sought OK for (see 1801100044) -- was granted in part last month.

Boeing and Greg Wyler's SOM1101 don't have any "understanding or agreement" about Boeing's future involvement in the two non-geostationary satellite system applications it wishes to hand off to SOM1101, Boeing company officials told FCC International Bureau staff according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday. But Boeing said it hopes to continue to be the manufacturer of those proposed satellites and would be able to support SOM1101 if such an agreement were reached. Multiple other prospective NGSO operators opposed the Boeing/SOM1101 transfer (see 1802130019).