Intelsat requested 30-day special temporary authority for three of its C-band earth stations. Intelsat plans to use two of its Hagerstown, Maryland, C-band earth stations and its Nuevo, California, earth station to provide launch and early orbit phase services for the AsiaSat 8 satellite that is expected to launch June 10, it said in applications to the FCC International Bureau.

FCC rules that grant earth stations aboard aircraft (ESAA) primary allocation in the 14.0-14.5 GHz band will be effective June 11, the FCC said in a Federal Register notice (http://1.usa.gov/1ld4Ely). The commission granted the status and made other rule adjustments last month in a second report and order (CD April 21 p17). The ESAA allocation lets airlines test systems and demonstrate that providing in-flight broadband services doesn’t cause harmful interference to other radio service operations, instead of having to license on-board systems on an ad-hoc basis (CD Dec 31/12 p8).

Gogo launched a travel and technology website. Www.concourse.gogoair.com will have original content from industry writers and information on technologies used to provide Internet access on planes, it said in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1mvfJRs).

AOL and Whalerock Industries redesigned AOL’s Moviefone website and apps to include TV content. The new look is designed to help consumers “find what they want to watch and where they can watch it,” AOL and Whalerock said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1hshKdu). The updated service will allow consumers to find theaters, channels and streaming services offering movies and TV shows, they said. Consumers can find an episode of a specific season of a series on platforms like Netflix or Amazon, “eliminating the frustrating experience of searching through different television platforms,” they said.

The FCC Small Entity Compliance Guide offers guidance to small businesses, organizations and governmental jurisdictions for complying with the recently adopted rule that prohibits competing top-four TV stations from jointly negotiating retransmission consent agreements. The guide, released Monday, isn’t intended to replace the rules and, “therefore, final authority rests solely with the rules,” the guide said (http://bit.ly/1fKsJDO). Stations subject to the rule are prohibited from engaging in joint negotiation 30 days after the publication date of the order in the Federal Register, it said. A multichannel video programming distributor filing a complaint must do so by demonstrating that the alleged good-faith violation occurred after the effective date of the rule, it said.

Two aspects of the protocols in the FCC’s Measuring Broadband America speed testing program “could affect the accuracy of the data collected,” Cablevision representatives told agency staff and the U.K. measuring firm SamKnows Monday (http://bit.ly/1ktCfJ1). Some older routers can’t process throughput delivered by ISPs, particularly at higher speed tiers, resulting in inaccurate data collection, Cablevision said, according to its ex parte filing. Also, if SamKnows panelists improperly configured their equipment, it could collect inaccurate data, Cablevision said.

Charter Communications is doubling the size of its labs and building technology and engineering facilities in Douglas County, Colo., which will open this year and “ultimately” include 55 new full-time employees and 45 new full-time contract positions, said the cable operator in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1u0GrXn). Charter Monday agreed to buy systems from Time Warner Cable which are being divested as part of TWC agreeing to be bought by Comcast (CD April 29 p4).

Mediacom boosted residential Internet speeds. Its Prime Plus service will offer speeds of up to 50 Mbps downstream, up from 30 Mbps, Mediacom said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1lv7vKr). It also will offer 5 Mbps upstream, up from 2 Mbps, it said. Internet speeds also will increase for the Ultra and Ultra Plus services, it said. The changes will take effect in June for Prime Plus and Ultra, while the Ultra Plus changes will be phased in throughout the summer, Mediacom said.

Comcast plans to give Xfinity customers the capability to stream video on the X1 platform. The new feature, which will be part of Xfinity Voice, will allow customers to stream personal video from their mobile devices, over the Internet and directly to the TV, Comcast said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1m8dWBz). The service also will include an in-language guide to provide “greater convenience for Spanish-speaking customers navigating the platform and its entertainment choices,” Comcast said. The company is planning to offer a voice-guided TV interface for blind and visually impaired customers.

Any online video clip captioning rules, which several media companies oppose, should apply only to new material, opponents reported telling staff in the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Media bureaus. Disney and its ESPN, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and its NBC News, NCTA, Time Warner and its Turner, and Viacom are “dedicated to voluntarily posting a growing number of captioned clips online,” particularly of news, said an NCTA ex parte filing. The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act gives the agency no authority to require online clips be captioned, said the association in a filing posted Monday to docket 11-154 (http://bit.ly/1fqviuO). The FCC Democrats may support requiring clips from broadcast, or pay-TV, shows be captioned when put online (CD March 7 p5). “Even if the CVAA could be read to extend to certain online clips of full-length programming aired on television with captions, those clips must be able to use repurposed captioning” from the TV show, said NCTA. “Captioning for most clips online today is burdensome because technology allowing for automated repurposing of TV captions is not yet available."