While the licensed lifespan of Intelsat 701 expires July 18, Intelsat is seeking an extension of its license term through Dec. 31, 2018, the company said in an FCC International Bureau filing Monday. The satellite went into service in 2001 and the expected end of its service life is late 2018, the company said.

Intelsat expects to get another decade of life out of Intelsat 10, it said in an FCC International Bureau application Friday, seeking an extension for the satellite's current license term. Intelsat 10 -- at 47.5 degrees east -- was launched in 2001 and is licensed through July 2, but that expiration date "is well before the expected end of service life ... which is mid-to-late 2026," Intelsat said in its application, seeking an extension to Sept. 30, 2026.

With its special temporary authority expiring May 6 to do international waters testing of ViaSat's KuKarray antenna to make sure it's suitable for U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command use, Boeing is seeking an extension. In an FCC International Bureau filing Wednesday, Boeing said it needed 30 more days to complete the evaluation of the antenna in use with its Boeing Broadband Satellite Network.

While awaiting a ruling on its application to permanently relocate Intelsat 1R to 50.1 degrees west (see 1602220010), Intelsat is seeking special temporary authority to drift the satellite from its current home at 50 degrees west and to operate it at 50.1 degrees west. In an FCC International Bureau filing Tuesday, Intelsat said 1R is being moved after transfer of some of its traffic to the recently launched Intelsat 29e, with the drift expected to start June 1 and to take "a few days."

Dish Network is clashing with the FTC, DOJ and four states over an October hearing on a permanent telemarketing injunction that Dish says "would have grave consequences" for its and its retailers' businesses. The U.S. is misstating Dish's decision to decline supplemental discovery, it said, and Dish won't use documents in 2015 supplemental discovery disclosures, but it's "not barred from presenting, and will present, other evidence" against the injunctive relief, Dish said in opposition (in Pacer) filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Illinois. The filing was in response to an FTC and Justice Department motion (in Pacer) filed in March seeking to cancel the Oct. 24 hearing. The mandatory injunction issue was bifurcated from the rest of the trial that ended Feb. 24 of robocall allegations brought by the FTC, California, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio (see 0903260144). Dish said in its filing it originally intended to present evidence during the Phase I trial dealing with the permanent injunction, but the court ordered that the scope of discovery would include nearly six years of call records, which would take a couple of years of discovery, so it opted "to decline to engage in that exercise." Dish said it plans in a permanent injunction hearing to introduce testimony and other evidence from witnesses "that will demonstrate the impracticability of the specific terms of the requested injunction, the adverse impact that it would have on Dish's business and the business of its retailers, and its excessive scope." The FTC and DOJ in their motion said that by choosing not to engage in discovery, the satellite company is waiving reliance on any compliance evidence that would postdate March 2010, the last date of call records it produced in discovery. It also said Dish had plenty of time at the four-week trial that ended Feb. 24 to present compliance evidence and "there is nothing new that Dish can offer at the October hearing except oral testimony about information that was turned over during discovery." In a separate response (in Pacer) Friday, the state plaintiffs said they support the U.S. request, citing Dish declining additional discovery and withdrawing its previously offered analysis. The states also asked that the court keep the Oct. 24 date open for other issues that may come up in discovery that Dish is scheduled to produce April 25.

Intelsat's and Harmonic's joint linear 4K ultra-HD demonstration channel, HVN Intelsat UHD, is available in Latin America, the companies said in a news release Monday. The channel already had been broadcast in North America via Galaxy 13, and now is available in Latin America via the Intelsat 14 satellite, they said. The free-to-air linear channel will enable multichannel video programming distributors and cable programmers "operating in Latin America to test their consumers’ appetite for varying forms of high-quality content," said Peter Ostapiuk, Intelsat head-media product services.

SES and Rutgers University's School of Engineering started work on content delivery network development meant to show and quantify the effectiveness of SES' CDN overlay in meeting demand for online video distribution, SES said in a news release Monday. The demonstrations will start by using satellite for linear and on-demand over-the-top delivery of content to wireless test beds at Rutgers' Wireless Information Network Lab, with the second stage being a national demo of satellite-based CDN involving multiple universities and test beds, it said. Steve Corda, SES vice president-business development North America, said the Rutgers demos "are designed to compare the scalability and reliability of a satellite-based CDN with terrestrial networks," saying it will "explore intelligent content caching and routing to determine when it makes sense to deliver over-the-top video via satellite or terrestrially, and when to cache that content at the network edge."

Dish Network and broadcasters China Central TV (CCTV) and TVB Holdings are suing HTV International (HTVI), the maker of the h.TV set-top box, for pirating CCTV and TVB TV programming. In a 32-page suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, they allege h.TV set-top subscribers, after a one-time payment of up to $300 for the box, receive unlicensed signals from China, Hong Kong and other nations, with Dish having some rights to TVB distribution in the U.S. h.TV's "massive piracy" works through a peer-to-peer network, with some h.TV users not only receiving programming streams but also retransmitting those streams to other h.TV users, according to the suit. The plaintiffs also allege HTVI has "gone to great lengths to conceal ... infringing activity" by claiming it has no role in the third-party h.TV apps that allow users to access and share the infringing content, but those app developers don't exist "or are controlled by HTVI," and the company is directly responsible for the capturing of CCTV and TVB broadcasts and development and dissemination of the apps. In the suit, the plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction from transmitting or distributing CCTV and TVB programming or selling an h.TV device that offers that programming, plus unspecified damages. HTVI didn't comment.

Roberson & Associates' testing of LTE interference with GPS is complete, with the final results likely to be filed with the FCC in early May, Ligado Networks said. In an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 12-340 about a phone call with Wireless Bureau Associate Chief Charles Mathias, Ligado said it expects to file a final report on the relationship between a 1 dB change in carrier-to-noise density and GPS device interference, and details on its testing processes and methodology. Ligado said earlier the testing was proving signals from its proposed LTE network won't interfere with GPS navigation devices (see 1602250032).

Intelsat and BBC World News renewed and expanded their distribution contract, with BBC World News standard definition and HD content to be delivered to Asia and the Americas using Galaxy 13, Intelsat 19, Intelsat 20 and Intelsat 21, plus Intelsat's IntelsatOne terrestrial network of teleports and leased fiber, the satellite company said in a news release Thursday.