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.

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.

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.”

Dish Network is adding a variety of age-appropriate ratings and reviews to its Dish Anywhere platform, the company said in a Thursday news release. The features -- such as age-based ratings provided by the nonprofit Common Sense Media and available in the new Parental Guide page inside a program’s profile -- will be added to the Dish Anywhere mobile apps and the Hopper DVR, Dish said.

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.

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."

LightSquared, Deere and Trimble seemingly are edging closer to settling interference claims, though LightSquared and Garmin remain at loggerheads, according to a transcript of a pretrial conference Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan before Judge Richard Berman. The satellite company "has had several helpful discussions with Deere over the past few weeks with more scheduled for this week," LightSquared counsel Winn Allen of Kirkland & Ellis told Berman, saying Deere "has shown a willingness to work ... on technical and regulatory issues" and that the two companies could come to a settlement agreement "sometime within the next few weeks." While a Deere settlement is not imminent, Deere attorney Kenneth Schacter of Morgan Lewis said the two "have had some constructive discussions ... and we are considering what we've heard." A settlement with Garmin "does not appear likely at this time," and the GPS company hasn't shown enthusiasm for a LightSquared-proposed idea of a mediator, Allen said. Garmin "would be delighted to settle this case" but hasn't seen any technical information from LightSquared that could be the basis of that solution, said Philip Douglas of Jones Day, representing Garmin. "The problem, I suspect, is that Garmin's devices are different from those at issue with Deere and Trimble," with its aeronautical navigation and landing devices presenting "more serious technical problems," Douglas said, adding that the company would rather have guidance from the Federal Aviation Administration than come to a separate agreement on its own with LightSquared, since other aeronautical navigation equipment makers could have issues. Berman scheduled a follow-up status conference for Oct. 8. LightSquared sued the three companies and the U.S. GPS Industry Council in 2013 after they raised concerns that LightSquared's planned ground-and-satellite-based LTE broadband network could interfere with GPS signals in adjacent spectrum space, which lead to the FCC revoking the company’s spectrum license, ultimately forcing it into bankruptcy.

Ericsson and Intelsat will jointly debut a high dynamic range video contribution feed for the IBC show in Amsterdam, the companies said in a news release Wednesday. Using the DVB-SX2 satellite broadcasting standard opens the door to better quality HD contribution feeds with HDR while avoiding bandwidth losses, they said.

BridgeSat and Draper Laboratory will cooperate on developing ground stations for BridgeSat's optical connectivity system, BridgeSat said Tuesday. The laser-based optical connectivity system will mean better transfer of large volumes of data from satellites and high-altitude unmanned vehicles, BridgeSat said. It said Draper has developed technology for ground station operations, task automation and data delivery, and the agreement will help in developing BridgeSat's laser communications receivers and data processing centers.

Intelsat and Harmonic are jointly launching HVN Intelsat UHD, a linear Ultra HD demonstration channel for North American TV markets, Intelsat said in a Tuesday news release. Broadcast by Intelsat's Galaxy 13 satellite, the channel is aimed at multichannel video programming distributors interested in preparing and testing their own Ultra HD transmissions. The two companies plan to demonstrate HVN Intelsat UHD channel content later this month at the IBC 2015 Conference in the Netherlands. That test signal will use teleport stream servers at Intelsat's teleport facility in Atlanta and Harmonic's ProMedia Xpress multiscreen decoder and packager for precompression of the UHD video loop. The companies said Harmonic will use its MediaGrid shared storage system, Polaris playout management suite, Spectrum X advanced media server system and Electra X3 advanced media processor for full Ultra HD channel production and transmission later this year.