The FCC International Bureau partially granted a petition by Iridium asking for clarification regarding a license granted to Inmarsat for operating in the 29.1-29.25 GHz band. Inmarsat in March received approval to build and operate a fixed-satellite service earth station at Lino Lakes, Minnesota, to be used for its Inmarsat-5 F2 satellite, as long as it does not interfere with other mobile satellite service (MSS) feeder link operations. Iridium then filed a petition for reconsideration on a condition of Inmarsat's use of the 29.1-29.25 GHz band, which it uses for its MSS operations. The International Bureau on Tuesday said it agreed to Iridium's request for clarification on whether the condition applies to future MSS feeder links as well as current, but rejected Iridium's request for a clarification that would say Inmarsat cannot claim protection for any reception of signals by the F2 satellite, limiting the condition to strictly between the satellite and the Lino Lakes facility.

Garmin plans to modify its SideVu sonar products after an International Trade Commission administrative law judge determined some were too similar to a patent held by Johnson Outdoors, the GPS company said Tuesday. Johnson Controls filed an ITC complaint in 2014 alleging that some Garmin hardware, including its SideVu sonar imaging transducer, infringe on Johnson Outdoors patents relating to marine sonar imaging. The ALJ's initial determination was that first-generation SideVu products were too similar to some claims of one of the three Johnson Outdoors patents in question, Garmin said. The GPS company said that while it disagrees with the determination and will seek ITC review, it will make changes to SideVu products and should have them commercially available before any ITC final determination becomes effective.

AT&T officials discussed their planned DirecTV buy and "voluntary commitments" to reassure the FCC, the company said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 14-90 about two recent phone calls with agency officials. "The participants discussed the substantial, direct, and verifiable benefits that the AT&T/DirecTV merger will deliver to tens of millions of consumers," AT&T said. "The participants also discussed voluntary commitments that will provide the Commission with further assurance that the transaction will serve the public interest and deliver benefits to consumers." The telco didn't elaborate on the commitments. Twenty-seven members of the American Cable Association pressed the FCC to impose regional sports programming conditions on AT&T/DirecTV, said a recent ex parte filing. ACA continued to urge the FCC to attach program-access conditions to the deal, said a separate ex parte filing. Hispanic-owned broadcaster ZGS continued to ask the FCC for help in persuading AT&T/DirecTV to carry its Spanish-language stations, another ex parte filing showed.

Inmarsat expects to have its Inmarsat-5 F2 satellite operational by the end of July, the company said in a special temporary authority request filed Sunday with the FCC International Bureau. The satellite was launched in February, the second of Inmarsat's Global Xpress constellation of three satellites for its plan to offer a global broadband network expected to go live later this year. In its International Bureau petition, the satellite company said it wants to use its Lino Lakes, Minnesota, earth station for 30 days to connect with the Inmarsat-5 F2 for tracking, telemetry and command functions prior to the satellite starting operational service.

Direct broadcast satellite companies should have the right, not the obligation, to carry a TV station's signal in a market modification, DirecTV said in an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 15-71. The filing said DirecTV counsel Michael Nilsson of Harris Wiltshire met with Evan Baranoff of the Media Bureau to lay out the satellite company's contention that it supports stations having certain carriage rights in their modified markets, as long as there's a means of demonstrating technical or economic reasons for why that signal can't be carried, and that those carriage rights are subject to the same limits that apply to local carriage. DirecTV previously proposed its own form letter for that certification process (see 1506240020).

Aiming to rebut criticisms of its proposed terrestrial low-power Wi-Fi service, Globalstar met with FCC officials last week to address interference claims, said an ex parte notice posted Wednesday in docket 13-213. Its March demonstration showed its broadband service "was compatible with existing unlicensed operations," the company said. Some of those interference claims -- that Globalstar's TLPS might affect Wi-Fi channel 11 (see 1506160037) -- are from opponents who also are potential competitors and run contrary "with their own proposals to operate on overlapping channels under new technical limits," Globalstar said. Meeting participants included Globalstar General Counsel Barbee Ponder, Roberson and Associates CEO Dennis Roberson, Jarvinian Ventures founder John Dooley and others from the Wireless Bureau, the International Bureau and the Office of Engineering and Technology.

Gilat Satellite Networks said the Bolivian space agency, Agencia Boliviana Espacial, placed an initial order for a SkyEdge II-c hub systems, a number of high-throughput Gemini VSATs and SatCare maintenance and training to create a national VSAT platform for the country's Tupac Katari telecommunications satellite program. Gilat said the space agency will use the SkyEdge technology to offer various high-throughput services to its customers. Tupac Katari went into orbit in late 2013.

EchoStar has renewed its push against the FCC levying regulatory fees on non-U.S.-licensed satellite operators that have U.S. market access. In a filing posted Monday in docket 15-121, the satellite company reiterated its opposition to an FCC proposal to charge direct broadcast satellite companies a 12-cents-per-subscriber regulatory fee -- a stance shared by numerous other satellite companies (see 1506230064). However, EchoStar and fellow satellite company Intelsat are parting ways on regulatory fees on operators that do not hold Title III licenses, as EchoStar said such a fee would run up against federal law, FCC precedent and multilateral trade agreements. Those fees also would keep foreign operators from entering the U.S. market and "could very likely lead to similar policies abroad resulting in potentially significant increase in costs." EchoStar raised similar arguments in 2014 when the FCC proposed similar regulatory fees. Intelsat in its own filing last month said the regulatory fee issue was "in fact very straightforward: non-U.S.-licensed satellite operators serving the U.S. market are benefiting at the expense of U.S. licensees. The discrepancy in the cost of providing service to the U.S. market gives non-U.S.-licensed satellite operators a competitive advantage over their U.S.-licensed competitors."

Rocket system maker Rocket Lab plans to build and operate its own orbital launch site, the company said in a Wednesday news release. The launch site, on New Zealand's South Island, will be used for launches of Rocket Lab's Electron rocket, which focuses on the small communications and imaging satellite market. The company said it expected the site to be operational by year end.

LightSquared and the GPS Innovation Alliance continue to spar over interference issues, with LightSquared criticizing multiple assertions in a presentation the GPS industry group gave to the FCC last month. Worries about its proposed satellite-based broadband network interfering with GPS signal reception is overblown and points more to GPS receiver design problems, LightSquared said in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 12-340. In its presentation, the GPS Innovation Alliance said that Global Navigation Satellite System equipment can better tolerate signal interference than many other commercial devices, but the power difference between GNSS and LTE signals is huge and the spacing between the signals is slim, meaning GNSS must tolerate what wireless systems do not. That presentation had "several significant errors," LightSquared said in its rebuttal. Receive-only devices such as GPS units don't need wide gaps of spectrum spacing from other operations, and the band gap the industry group talked about is at times less than what exists between LightSquared and GNSS, it said. "If GNSS devices are particularly vulnerable to interference, then high levels of resiliency should be a primary consideration in responsible receiver design," LightSquared said. "The tools to prevent [interference] lie in the hands of the GNSS receiver designers themselves."