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.

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."

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.

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."

Seven commonly controlled broadcasters' attempts to get the FCC involved in stuck contract negotiations with DirecTV "turn the good-faith standard on its head," said the DBS provider Wednesday in a filing posted in docket 12-1. Blackhawk Broadcasting, Bristlecone Broadcasting, Broadcasting Licenses Limited Partnership, Eagle Creek Broadcasting of Laredo, Mountain Licenses, Northwest Broadcasting and Stainless Broadcasting filed a complaint with the FCC last month. They asked the FCC to step into the retransmission consent negotiations, alleging DirecTV wasn't negotiating in good faith and asking the agency to force it to show numbers to back up its estimations of the market value of the group's signals (see 1506120021). The rates Northwest demanded would make it "by far the highest-paid broadcaster that DirecTV carries anywhere," and disclosing what it pays others would violate agreements with those broadcasters, said the satellite company. Having failed to show any kind of bad-faith negotiations, Northwest has no case to make for asking the FCC to open DirecTV's rate data to it, the company said. "If ever there might be an occasion to do so, surely this is not it."

The Sky Mexico-1 satellite finished on-orbit testing and checkout of spacecraft systems and was turned over to owner DirecTV, Orbital ATK said in a Tuesday news release. The satellite was launched May 27 from French Guiana. It will provide direct-to-home TV broadcast services to DirecTV customers in the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico.

LightSquared is asking for FCC help in obtaining GPS receiver designs, having confidential talks with the major GPS firms about the economic issues concerning them and meeting in-person with GPS executives to hammer out industry issues with the satellite company. LightSquared CEO Doug Smith met Philip Verveer, senior counselor to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, to talk about GPS industry concerns as LightSquared makes plans for its L-band spectrum once it emerges from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, said an ex parte notice posted Monday in docket 12-340. Smith "emphasized that he is certain LightSquared and the major GPS device firms can reach a reasonable business compromise," LightSquared said, saying FCC intervention "could help resolve the issues." LightSquared also has hired a consulting firm, Roberson & Associates, to study interference issues between GPS services and broadband (see 1506250008).

ViaSat is adding new products and services aimed at government agency and military customers, it said in a Monday news release. It said the new offerings include cybersecurity vulnerability assessment and remediation services and managed security services, and cyber-sensing capabilities available via software upgrades to some of its network managed security services.

Iridium signed up resellers for its new Push-to-Talk satellite-based communications system, including AST Group, Beam Communications, Gardline Comms, Gilat Satcom and Spacenet Communication Services de Mexico, the company said in a Monday news release. Push-to-Talk is based on the satellite company's low earth orbit constellation, and uses its various PTT radios and other providers' PTT devices that employ the Iridium PTT 9523 Core transceiver.