Financier BIU can't show any FCC error in how the agency handled a private contractual dispute between BIU and satellite company Spectrum Five, the respondent commission said Thursday as it urged denial of BIU's petition for review (see 2409100005). In a docket 24-1189 brief Wednesday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the FCC said its Enforcement Bureau's denial of BIU's request that the agency reopen Spectrum Five's complaint against Intelsat was in line with the agency's "long-standing practice of non-involvement in private contractual disputes." The FCC said BIU has given no reason why it can't pursue its contract claims in state court, which is the proper forum. The commission said that while BIU alleges that Spectrum Five's Intelsat complaint was withdrawn due to fraud, the fraud allegations "hinge on the contested interpretation of loan agreements that the Commission properly refrained from resolving."

Viasat is rolling out uncapped speeds, expanded capacity and greater network prioritization features for its business aviation in-flight connectivity service. It said Wednesday the enhancements come as part of the company's harmonization of its business aviation service with Inmarsat, which it acquired in 2023 (see 2305310003).

Satellite imaging company Pixxel Space Technologies hopes to launch its Honeybee-00 demonstration satellite, which is to be part of its planned hyperspectral imaging constellation, in June, it told the FCC Space Bureau in an application posted Tuesday. Pixxel asked for a waiver of the requirement that the probability of human casualty from portions of the satellite surviving reentry be zero. It said simulations show its propulsion tanks could survive reentry and cause "a 1:19,100 chance of human casualty," but the tanks can't be readily replaced this far along in the manufacturing process. It said in the future Pixxel will use propulsion tanks that fully burn up on reentry.

The FCC Space Bureau has approved Sidus Space's plans for deploying and operating its non-geostationary orbit earth exploration satellite service satellites LizzieSat-2 through -5, it said in a notice last week. Pointing to a set of SpaceX-requested license conditions, the bureau said it was adopting an on-orbit failure reporting requirement but declining other conditions. SpaceX has frequently sought similar conditions on pending satellite applications (see 2301180049).

The FCC Space Bureau gave the green light to the rest of Tomorrow Companies' planned 18-satellite non-geostationary orbit constellation intended to provide near real-time weather monitoring and forecasting (see 2406200007), according to a bureau grant last week. The approval was for 14 satellites; four were approved previously.

A non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service spectrum sharing order put on circulation last week will disappoint some satellite operators, but should see 5-0 FCC commissioner approval, an FCC official told us Friday. The draft order, announced Friday, would clarify some details from the FCC's 2003 NGSO FSS sharing order, according to the commission. That 2003 order was adopted 4-0 (see 2304200039). The FCC said the draft order would address some specifics of the degraded throughput methodology that NGSO FSS licensees use in compatibility analyses when coordinating with satellite systems in other processing rounds absent a coordination agreement. The draft order also denies on the merits a OneWeb partial reconsideration petition on the 2023 order (see 2307210037), the FCC official said. The draft order, we're told, adopts the 3% average degraded throughput metric that operators backed, including SpaceX and Amazon's Kuiper. "There is widespread consensus that the Commission’s resolution of issues here is critical to promoting the growth of non-geostationary satellite orbit systems and the provision of services to the U.S. public," Eutelsat's OneWeb said Friday in docket 21-456. It urged rejection of the 3% metric.

SES' purchase of Intelsat is nothing short of "survival" for the geostationary orbit (GEO) operators in a marketplace where well-funded low earth orbit operators have "dramatically disrupted the already hyper-competitive satellite communications industry across all verticals," the companies said in a paper on LEO disruption. Submitted to DOJ, a redacted version of the paper was posted Thursday in docket 24-267. The two companies are seeking regulatory approval of SES' proposed $3.1 billion purchase of Intelsat (see 240430004). SES and Intelsat said they "face enormous and increasing pressure to adapt, innovate, cut costs, lower prices, and improve services to survive," and without the deal "it is unlikely that either Party acting alone would be able to do that." They said LEO operators enjoy huge cost advantages due to vertical integration. LEOs are the predominant suppliers of satellite capacity, and that capacity influx has commoditized satellite connectivity, "driving down capacity, service, and equipment prices," they said. Traditional GEO customers "increasingly view LEOs as substitute -- and often preferred -- sources of supply," they said. Tens of thousands of LEO satellites are expected to launch in the coming years from SpaceX's Starlink, Eutelsat's OneWeb, Amazon’s Kuiper, Telesat's Lightspeed, three Chinese mega constellations and others, they said. Those LEOs will drive almost all the ten-fold growth in high-throughput satellite capacity expected by 2028, they said. Meanwhile, the average global price of satellite bandwidth for data services has dropped 77% since 2019. SES and Intelsat said combined they account for less than 5% of all HTS capacity, and that is likely to shrink to less than 2% by 2026. They said that, combined, they can invest more resources in ground equipment and platforms. New SES will be better able to develop and fund a next-generation multi-orbit constellation with the throughput, capacity, range and latency characteristics needed "to more vigorously compete, including with well-financed LEO competitors."

The number of in-flight connectivity-equipped aircraft topped 38,000 last year and is expected to exceed 60,800 by 2033, Novaspace said Thursday. As aircraft operators shift from legacy geostationary orbit-based systems to non-geostationary orbit-based (NGSO) ones and hybrid services, bandwidth consumption is rising, it said. Total leased capacity, 90 Gbps in 2023, is expected to reach 1.8 Tbps by 2033, it said. NGSO services such as SpaceX's Starlink and Eutelsat's OneWeb "are set to revolutionize in-flight connectivity" through greater bandwidth at lower capacity costs, Novaspace said.

The ITU Radiocommunication Sector's SpaceCap software for filing satellites and earth stations needs updating that would allow for more detailed coordinates of earth stations' locations, Access Partnership Engineering Manager-Space & Connectivity Abubakar Manzo blogged Thursday. Geographical coordinates are mandatory for earth station filings, but SpaceCap goes down only to geographic minutes and seconds, he said. That can create licensing, coordination and protection problems when dealing with antennas close to one another, such as at antenna farms, he said. SpaceCap accepting fractions of seconds would make for better notification and coordination procedures, he said.

AST SpaceMobile Chairman/CEO Abel Avellan met with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to discuss the company's near-term plans for testing direct-to-device commercial satellites, potential timing of full commercial deployment of D2D service and regulatory approvals needed, said a posting Thursday in docket 20-32.