China Railway Rolling Stock will use Gilat Satellite Networks' satellite-based broadband for connectivity to its high-speed trains, the Israel-based Gilat said in a news release Thursday. Along with Internet access for passengers, the broadband connectivity will let China Railway monitor and perform maintenance services on its trains via satellite, Gilat said.

Cobham Satcom and ViaSat plan to jointly offer a push-to-talk (PTT) system for the mobile satellite services market, ViaSat said in a news release Thursday. The system will involve Explorer 122, a "ruggedized" vehicle-mounted IP satellite terminal, which will operate over ViaSat's L-band managed service network and goes with Cobham's Explorer PTT-II system. The joint ViaSat/Cobham PTT offering will use LightSquared's SkyTerra-1 satellite, ViaSat said.

Pointing to a test of its terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) at Washington School for Girls (WSG) in the District of Columbia, Globalstar said in an FCC ex parte filing posted Thursday that it "hopes to bring similar benefits to thousands of other students across the United States within the near future." Consultant AT4 Wireless set up TLPS-enabled access points at the school and integrated them into the school's wireless network this fall, Globalstar said. Before TLPS, channels 1, 6 and 11 experienced congestion with other wireless networks in the school building during peak usage time, Globalstar said. After TLPS installation, downlink throughput increased 45 percent and uplink throughput increased 34 percent, it said. The filing in docket 13-213 recapped a visit to the school by Julius Knapp, FCC Office of Engineering and Technology chief; Troy Tanner, International Bureau deputy chief; and Jose Albuquerque, IB chief-satellite division. Globalstar, which has pushed repeatedly for agency approval, saying demonstrations and tests have proven TLPS poses no interference threat to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth (see 1511020016), said the WSG deployment "further confirms the significant public interest benefits of the ... proposed TLPS rules."

ViaSat in collaboration with Rockwell Collins will integrate its ViaSat VMT-1500 terminal and its global Ku-band Internet service with Rockwell Collins' ERT-120 smart cabin routers and its ARINCDirect flight support services to provide cabin and cockpit connectivity to business aircraft operators, the satellite company said in a news release Wednesday. ViaSat General Manager Ken Peterman said the collaboration will "offer business jet operators a single, comprehensive suite of cabin connectivity capabilities across our advanced global internet service." Also Wednesday, ViaSat announced its new Exede WiFi Modem, which allows download speeds of up to 25 Mbps. The Exede is aimed at the home satellite Internet service market, ViaSat said in a news release.

Despite FCC efforts to use licensing conditions to plug loopholes in the two-degree spacing policy, the agency needs "a more definitive solution" by eliminating the policy altogether, Intelsat said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 12-267. Intelsat has repeatedly pushed in recent months for doing away with the two-degree spacing rule in favor of ITU filing priority as the basis for coordination requirements (see 1508100064). And in a meeting between company representatives and staff from Chairman Tom Wheeler's office and from the International Bureau Intelsat repeated many of those arguments and said the two-degree spacing rule may be inconsistent with U.S. treaty obligations, the filing said. When the agency asked how to safeguard against higher-priority applicants acting unreasonably in coordination minus the two-degree rule, Intelsat said the FCC "could clearly articulate its intent ... that U.S. licensees and market access recipients abide by the ITU policy that all parties to a coordination act reasonably and attempt to accommodate the operations of other operators."

LightSquared is continuing its lobbying for FCC approval of license transfer approvals it needs to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-126, it said it and a representative of JPMorgan Chase met with staff of Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and made a similar pitch to what the company told representatives of Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Ajit Pai days before (see 1511130037) -- how allowing the license transfers will let it emerge from bankruptcy and that "prompt ... approval was necessary."

The Satellite Industry Association (SIA) is calling House passage of the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship Act "an important step to maintaining U.S. innovation and leadership in satellite launch." The bill would extend the commercial space launch indemnification regime -- which offers government indemnification for any damages in excess of the required private launch insurance limits -- through 2025, and the Senate has already passed similar legislation, SIA said Tuesday. “Extending the launch indemnification regime for a further 10 years ensures the continuation of a long-standing provision needed for the global competitiveness of U.S. launch services companies,” SIA President Tom Stroup said in a statement.

ViaSat unveiled an ethernet 100 Gbps encryption device, debuting at the SC15 supercomputing conference this week in Austin. In a news release Monday, ViaSat said the SEC line of products features multiple bandwidth profiles and low latency.

Honeywell plans to buy Satcom1 in a bid to expand its European presence and its aeronautical satellite services business, it said Monday. Honeywell didn't announce terms and said in a news release Monday it expects to complete the deal by year's end. Satcom1 specializes in on-board communications routing software and airtime and consulting services. It's a distributor of Honeywell's JetWave terminals and Inmarsat's GX Aviation program.

The Transportation Department could make better use of its time and efforts encouraging LightSquared and the major GPS makers to resolve their disagreements on power levels and on steps GPS manufacturers could take to address overload, LightSquared said in an FCC filing posted Thursday in docket 12-340. It included comments LightSquared submitted earlier in the week with the DOT regarding the agency's draft test plan for studying interference between LightSquared's proposed wireless broadband network and GPS devices. LightSquared has been critical of that test plan (see 1510210022). In the latest DOT comments, it said DOT's proposed metric of 1 dB change in noise floor "is misguided because it fails to measure what the expert agency and Congressionally-designated spectrum regulator -- the Federal Communications Commission -- considers when it evaluates 'harmful interference': the ultimate impact of adjacent-band activity on the performance of the device." Arguments that ITU recommendations support such a benchmark are wrong because many recommendations "begin with user-measurable criteria and then derive interference levels," LightSquared said. Some recommendations referring to 1 dB noise floor relate to in-band interference, not adjacent band, and none of them applies the 1 dB specification for adjacent-band signal effects on GPS, it said. No one has shown a strong correlation between device performance and 1 dB desensitization, and even if such correlation existed, LightSquared's proposed testing would show it, it said. LightSquared also rejected GPS Innovation Alliance arguments that the DOT doesn't necessarily need detailed RF front-end information on the devices to be tested, saying it agreed with GPSIA that dwell time should be a component of testing, but it should be at least three minutes.