Citing "an anomaly" in EchoStar 8 operations, EchoStar plans to deorbit the satellite. In an International Bureau filing Friday, it said it previously informed the bureau's satellite division staff of an anomaly that happened April 16, and that despite attempts at resolving it the company experienced difficulties in keeping the satellite within its station-keeping box. Deorbit could come as soon as Monday, it said.

Intelsat and Starz renewed their distribution agreement for Intelsat to provide broadcast and satellite distribution forStarz, Intelsat said in a news release Friday.

The Senate should confirm the Trump administration's two nominations to the board of the Export-Import Bank, since those confirmations would give the board a quorum again and let the bank provide credit support to projects $10 million and larger, the Satellite Industry Association (SIA) said in a statement Friday. SIA said Ex-Im "has been virtually closed" for more than a year to the satellite industry due to the vacant board seats. The White House earlier this month said it was nominating former Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., as Ex-Im president, and Spencer Bachus of Bachus & Brom as board member.

Planet Labs closed on its acquisition of Google's Terra Bella subsidiary, Planet Labs CEO Will Marshall said in a blog post Tuesday. Marshall said the integration of Terra Bella's SkySat constellation and imagery will open the door to such offerings as tipping-off or cueing electrical optical satellite systems for better maritime domain awareness. The FCC International Bureau approved transfer of control in the deal last week.

Malaysia Airlines is the inaugural customer of a flight tracking system involving connected aircraft services firm SITAOnAir, flight tracking company FlightAware and Aireon, which is deploying a satellite-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast system. According to a media release Tuesday, the system adds Aireon's ADS-B data to FlightAware's information from multiple global sources. It said the Aireon system is expected to be operational in 2018 with the completion of Iridium's Next satellite constellation.

Operation of a OneWeb low earth orbit (LEO) constellation is years off, but Intelsat is contemplating numerous applications for government and civil agency customers, said Intelsat General President Skot Butler in a blog post Tuesday. The OneWeb/Intelsat planned merger is aimed at making Intelsat General "a one-stop" geostationary/LEO service provider, with applications including provision of tactical Wi-Fi service for military operations in the field and support of unmanned aircraft systems operations over the Arctic.

No single avoidance angle will sufficiently define in-line events and prevent interference, Telesat Canada executives told all three FCC commissioners, according to a docket 16-408 ex parte filing posted Tuesday. The avoidance angle between two systems depends on elevation angles, Telesat Canada said, saying a "share in-line events" regime for spectrum essentially would work as band segmentation due to the number and frequency of such events. The company plans a constellation of 117 interconnected low earth orbit satellites, with two prototypes to launch this year, and said it met with the FCC to discuss its petition for access to the U.S. market for its non-geostationary constellation (see 1611160010). The filing said Telesat Canada representatives -- CEO Dan Goldberg, Senior Vice President-Corporate and Business Development Michael Schwartz and Chief Technical Officer Dave Wendling -- also met with International Bureau staffers, including acting Chief Tom Sullivan.

A permanent injunction against the companies behind the TVpad set-top box needs to be modified because the defendants continue to pirate copyrighted programming through a comparable product, said Dish Network and broadcasters China Central TV (CCTV) and TVB Holdings in a motion to amend (in PACER) filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Dish and the others sued in 2015, alleging the plaintiffs -- including Create New Technology (CNT), Hua Yang International Technology, TVpad.com and NewTVpad.com -- were infringing on CCTV and TVB programming, with Dish having exclusive rights to that content in the U.S. The plaintiffs received a permanent injunction last August, but the defendants now are marketing an identical device, blueTV, that functions the same as TVpad, Dish and the others said. CNT and Hua Yang couldn't be reached for comment.

Satellite terminal company Norsat received an unsolicited, conditional, nonbinding purchase offer from Privet Fund Management, it said in a news release Monday. Norsat said it put together a special board committee to review the proposal, and it notified Hytera Communications about the takeover bid -- Hytera having signed an agreement in March for the buyout of Norsat.

The Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition (FWCC) is pushing back against some satellite operators' proposals for changes to the spectrum frontiers order (see 1702270018). In a filing to be posted in docket 14-177, FWCC said the satellite operators' proposal for a tiered spectrum frontiers approach whereby an earth station protected area could cover 0.2 percent to 10 percent of a license area population, depending on the band and the area's population, would threaten upper microwave flexible use system service and that the FCC should stick with the current rule or the FWCC tiered proposal that uses smaller percentages. FWCC said it agreed with the satellite operators that there needs to be better definition of what types of facilities and transportation routes can't be in earth station interference zones, but said it disagreed with some of the proposed satellite operators' definitions. FWCC said it doesn't disagree with the satellite proposal to dropping the limit of three earth stations per license area, as long as the population percentage limit remains the same or, in a tiered approach, is no higher than the FWCC proposal and as long as the population limit applies to the aggregated projected areas of all the earth stations in a license area. And FWCC said it objected to the satellite proposal of a coordination system database of UMFUS facilities "as being unnecessarily expensive and complex."