Arianespace will launch the BSAT-4a satellite for Japan's Broadcasting Satellite System (B-SAT) in late 2017, it said in a Monday news release. The launch on an Ariane 5 rocket will be from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, under a contract between satellite manufacturer SSL and B-SAT. Arianespace has launched all of B-SAT's satellites. BSAT-4a is to provide digital broadcast services to Japan, including 4K and 8K Ultra HD TV services. Japanese broadcasters have earmarked the debut of 8K Ultra HD TV services in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

SpaceX will launch a Hispasat satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket and the Saudi Arabian Arabsat 6A communications satellite on a Falcon Heavy, the company said Monday at the World Satellite Business Conference in France. The launches are to be between late 2017 and 2018 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, SpaceX said. With those new signings, SpaceX said it has a manifest of more than 60 missions representing more than $7 billion under contract.

EchoStar is seeking FCC International Bureau permission to relocate EchoStar 15. The move from 45.1 degrees west to 72.6 degrees west would let the satellite provide backup capacity for the Dish Network satellite TV network, EchoStar said in an IB application filed Thursday. No satellites are operating within two degrees of 72.6 degrees west on overlapping telemetry, tracking and control frequencies, the company said. If the special temporary authorization is approved, EchoStar would begin moving the satellite by the end of September and start acting as Dish backup by Nov. 17, it said.

The Transportation Department's proposed study of LightSquared's proposed L-band LTE network and possible GPS interference "waste[s] scarce taxpayer dollars [and] will not produce any information of value to the FCC," a company spokeswoman said Friday. DOT set an Oct. 9 deadline for comments for its draft test plan on establishing criteria for power limits for transmitters in GPS-adjacent bands, it said in a Federal Register notice Wednesday. DOT isn't developing standards either for GPS receivers or transmitters operating in adjacent bands, but the interference tolerance masks "will be used to assess the adjacent band interference power levels that can be tolerated" by Global Navigation Satellite System receivers, the agency said. The draft test plan gives broad outlines of the study parameters. For example, the categories of receivers operating in the 1559-1610 MHz band to be studied are aviation, cellular, general location/navigation, high precision, timing, networks and space-based receivers. The details of the test procedure are being developed, but the testing is expected to take up to nine days, DOT said. "Instead of developing a plan to enable technological advancement and spur spectrum innovation, the DOT is proposing to set limits on spectrum use by promoting the continued use of outdated filter technology in receivers," the LightSquared spokeswoman said. This latest plan follows a 2012 DOT testing plan aimed at setting up "the framework for definition of the processes and assumptions that will form the basis for development of the GPS adjacent-band compatibility for GPS civil applications," she said. "It has taken DOT almost four years to propose a vague study that is absent procedures or timelines and will not answer the critical question of whether wireless broadband would cause any actual harm to the accuracy of GPS devices." Roberson and Associates is doing a LightSquared-commissioned study of the scope and degree of L-band LTE network interference to GPS, and results are due this fall. That plan has faced criticism from the GPS industry as being redundant to the DOT planning effort (see 1508250070).

Telekom Austria Group and Antik Telecom will use the Eutelsat 16A satellite for their new direct-to-home platform, Antik Sat, for the Slovak and Czech markets, the companies said Friday. Antik Sat is scheduled to launch in October with more than 90 channels, a third of which will be HD, they said. For Antik Sat, Telekom Austria will double the capacity it has leased on Eutelsat 16A to eight transponders, the companies said at the IBC Show in Amsterdam.

Intelsat remains unconvinced SpaceX's experimental operations won't interfere with its own co-frequency geostationary satellites, it said in an FCC Office of Engineering and Technology ex parte filing submitted Thursday in File 0356-EX-PL-2015. While it "does not necessarily oppose" SpaceX seeking regulatory approval for plans to launch test satellites in advance of a low earth orbit constellation providing a global broadband service, Intelsat said it still lacks sufficient data to assess the potential for Ku-band downlink interference issues. Those SpaceX test satellites could increase geostationary orbit earth station receiver noise by roughly 24 percent, Intelsat said, adding that's quadruple the single-entry coordination trigger in ITU regulations for co-frequency satellite networks, and uses more than the 20 percent allowance for multiple entry fixed-satellite service interference recommended by the ITU, Intelsat said. The company also raised red flags about the growing proliferation of propulsion-less low earth orbit satellites such as SpaceX proposes. "Secondary Part 5 experimental aircraft should bear a greater share of the burden of collision avoidance," Intelsat representatives told OET and International Bureau staff in a meeting, according to the ex parte filing. The company said it "would be pleased to refine its calculations were more information on the public record," repeating the argument it has made repeatedly (see 1507270060). SpaceX has said Intelsat is on "a fishing expedition," creating needless delay (see 1507310040).

MaxLinear will debut a multichannel satellite Ultra HD set-top box and media server reference design at the IBC show in Amsterdam, it said Friday. The reference design, done jointly with Quantenna and STMicroelectronics, uses MaxLinear's MxL5xx satellite receivers, ST’s STiH418 4Kp60 Ultra HD decoder and Quantenna’s QSR1000 Wave 2 Wi-Fi chipset, MaxLinear said.

LightSquared's final plan for testing L-band LTE network interference to GPS is better than initially proposed, but still could be improved, said the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council in an FCC filing posted Wednesday in docket 12-340. NPSTC met with LightSquared consultant Roberson Aug. 11 to voice concerns about the test methodology, such as the lack of any indication the testing would look at possible impacts to public safety and that the simulated LightSquared test signal levels -- -25 dBm to -30 dBm -- were lower than what would be expected in actual practice. The final test plan submitted in August by LightSquared (see 1508250070) includes a public safety portable radio and public safety mobile data terminal among those being used in the testing, though LightSquared may want to consider adding others, such as ankle bracelet tracking devices used in house arrests and limited releases, plus vehicular tracking devices, NPSTC said. The final test plan also raises the maximum level for the simulated LightSquared LTE signal to -20 dBm, which is an improvement, though any LightSquared operation that gets approved should be conditioned on a maximum power flux density at ground level that's comparable to the level used in testing, NPSTC said. LightSquared's testing plan indicates it may test in the 1545-1555 MHz band for LTE downlink operations, and though use of that spectrum "could cause significant impact on GPS," testing of that spectrum section is necessary if that sub-band does end up being used, NPSTC said. Any time to first fix testing of the devices needs to include signal levels up to -20 dBm or the equivalent level that matches the power flux density at ground level that's expected to be deployed if LightSquared gets FCC approval for its LTE operations, NPSTC said. While the firm plans to test only 10 MHz bandwidth version of LTE, smaller bandwidth variants can point to additional GPS sensitivity to out-of-band emissions and should also be tested if lower bandwidth versions of LTE may come, NPSTC said. In a statement Thursday, LightSquared said it was "critical that the interests of public safety are represented and satisfied, and over the past month [Roberson] and NPSTC have had a cooperative back and forth, which is both reflected in the test plan and ongoing today. The testing process is underway, but also iterative. [Roberson] has incorporated many of the NPSTC elements, and as additional feedback comes in, the test plan will continue to reflect that with the goal to establish how compatibility can be established between wireless broadband and GPS."

Air Force development of a GPS operational control system that would replace the existing ground system is four years behind and $1.1 billion over budget, said a GAO study released Wednesday. While the Air Force has contingency plans for maintaining the GPS constellation even while operational control system work goes on, those plans "may not deliver the full range of GPS capability," such as the effort to develop GPS cards that can receive the military code signal, thus helping operate in jammed environments, the GAO report said. That military code capability won't be seen until mid 2019 at the earliest, even though the Defense Department has plans to generally buy only military code-capable user equipment after FY 2017, the GAO said, saying the Air Force should seek outside guidance and expertise to help address the systemic problems. Operational control system development "has been mired in development difficulties resulting in steady cost growth and schedule delays [and] has yet to turn the corner on resolving the problems that have affected the program since development began in 2010," GAO said. "Five years into what was originally estimated to be a five-year effort, [development] is still roughly five years away from completion." While many GPS satellites have lived beyond their expected lifespans, a modernized GPS system -- including the operational control system as well as GPS III satellites -- "is critical," and the operational control system development delays will take longest to address, GAO said. "Those delays are likely to pose significant risks to sustaining the GPS constellation, and consequently, delivering GPS capability to the military community." The GAO report recommends -- and the Department of Defense agrees in its response in the report -- an independent task force of other defense agencies and military services be convened and give guidance on tackling the underlying problems. The report and DOD also agreed on keeping members of that task force as a management advisory team to help in regular analyses of defects, on developing better cost and schedule estimates based on past performance of the operational control system development, and on a system for ensuring information from the operational control system assessment is used in seeing if further program changes are needed. But the DOD partially disagreed with a GAO recommendation that military services be allowed to assess the progress of military GPS user equipment (MGUE) design before committing test and procurement resources. Contractors are expected to deliver MGUE prototypes soon, well before any such assessment could be done, and would require contractors halt their current development work, which could lead to delays of months, it said. Military services aren't bound to buy any MGUE cards until an operational user evaluation report is done, and the Air Force will be responsible for MGUE card development until any performance deficiencies found in that evaluation report are fixed, the DOD said.

Satellites are the “optimal means of transmitting Ultra HD content to large audiences” because of their “bandwidth availability” and their global “footprints,” SES said in a white paper released Thursday at the IBC show in Amsterdam. That enables viewers “to receive the same quality signal wherever they may be located within the satellite coverage area,” said the paper, which extols the SES Ultra HD technology and marketing story. “And the best part is, satellites are Ultra HD ready and require no modification to accommodate Ultra HD transmissions.” Without H.265 compression, Ultra HD transmissions would be “prohibitively expensive for broadcasters and service providers,” it said. H.265 “has made inroads and already helps broadcasters today to transmit Ultra HD at less than four times the HD capacity,” it said. “As one of the largest digital video platforms in the world, SES has supported these developments right from the start. Home to over 40 direct-to-home TV platforms and nearly 7,000 TV channels, reaching 312 million households and 1.1 billion people worldwide, SES is in the pole position to drive Ultra HD forward.”