Dish Network and the Weather Channel signed a multiyear renewal contract, Dish said Tuesday. Customers will continue to have access to The Weather Channel and its interactive app on Dish's Hopper and other select set-top boxes, Dish said. The agreement includes over-the-top streaming rights for live and VOD content, it said. The Weather Channel will be added to Sling TV by July, Dish said.

In the U.K. and Ireland, Sky has connected more than 1 million boxes in the year to date, “taking our connected base to almost 7 million homes,” the company said Tuesday in its Q3 earnings announcement. This has driven on-demand downloads to more than 300 million during Q3, up 63 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, Sky said. In Italy, roughly a third of Sky customers have now connected their boxes to the Internet with the connected home strategy being deployed in Germany for the first time this quarter, it said. “This growing penetration of connected devices is enabling us to drive growth in revenues from new products and services.” For example, more than half a million customers in the U.K. and Ireland have purchased one or more movies from the Sky Store, and the service regularly ranks No. 1 or 2 among digital retailers for new releases, Sky said.

The FCC should encourage service providers to adopt the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council’s best practices on battery backup power instead of imposing a mandatory requirement, said EchoStar subsidiary Hughes Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Jennifer Manner and other company staff during a Thursday meeting with members of the Public Safety Bureau and Office of Strategic Planning & Analysis. Hughes staffers also discussed what they believe is the best approach to implementing the CSRIC battery backup best practices, the company said in an ex parte filing Monday.

Raytheon received a $103 million Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contract to supply a space-based system that will make air travel more efficient and safe, Raytheon said Tuesday. The Raytheon system will be part of the FAA's Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), which improves GPS signal accuracy for use by general and commercial aircraft, it said. WAAS will allow more access to remote landing sites, direct flight routing and precision landing, without dependence on ground-based infrastructure, it said. Raytheon will develop a payload that will be included in a new geostationary (GEO) satellite and ground uplink stations to support the WAAS system in U.S. airspace, it said. The GEO 6 and 5 system, which was awarded to Raytheon in 2012, will replace two WAAS GEO payloads at the end of their service leases, it said. The WAAS GEO 6 payload will be launched in Q2 of 2017, and the system will enter a 10-year operational phase in 2019, Raytheon said.

Globalstar's terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) will have a negative impact on Wi-Fi, resulting from channel 14 TLPS, CableLabs said in an ex parte notice posted at the FCC Tuesday in docket 13-213. The impact varies depending on the type of Wi-Fi equipment, it said. There was 65 percent reduction to channel 11 downlink with a residential access point, "more significant throughput degradation" than with an enterprise access point, CableLabs said. Globalstar's and CableLabs' measurements are only useful for deployment situations that Globalstar, if authorized, would use, CableLabs said. "If Globalstar would be provided the flexibility to use LTE instead of 802.11 Wi-Fi technology, or the ability to operate outdoors, or otherwise deploy TLPS in a manner not represented in the demonstration, then the utility of the demonstration data is limited," it said. There were inconsistent results with latency and jitter in the TLPS demos, likely caused by equipment setup and ambient noise, CableLabs said. "These inconsistent results demonstrate the need for further testing in a controlled environment," CableLabs said.

Six satellite operators and manufacturers unveiled the SAT>IP Alliance, formalizing a coalition started last year to develop compatible hardware and software for the SAT>IP technology. It was announced at NAB Show in Las Vegas, said an SES news release Wednesday. The alliance includes ALi Corporation, Hispasat, MaxLinear, Nagra, Panasonic and SES. The organization will promote the use of the SAT>IP protocol in the industry and improve the standard, SES said. SAT>IP technology "converts satellite signals into IP at the reception point using a small server, which may be located in the satellite dish or in the user's home, and distributing the signal to the different IP devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops," SES said. It allows for high-quality content via satellite, SES said.

Inmarsat-5 F2, the second Global Xpress satellite (see 1501200055), successfully completed orbital deployment, Inmarsat said in a news release Tuesday. The satellite's thermal radiator panels were deployed and the payload was switched on, Inmarsat said. The next phase is payload testing, which is expected to take three weeks, it said. Inmarsat-5 F3, the third Global Xpress satellite, is scheduled to launch before the end of Q2, which will complete a globally available Ka-band mobile broadband satellite network, it said. Inmarsat is also collaborating with Honeywell Aerospace and Kymeta on an in-flight Internet connectivity system, it said in another news release Tuesday. The companies will offer a fast, lightweight Ka-band antenna for the business and commercial aviation market, it said. Kymeta will offer its mTenna products to Honeywell, which will test and integrate them into its JetWave aviation product line, Inmarsat said.

Dish expanded delivery of Netflix to its Joey clients, including Joey, Super Joey and Wireless Joey, Dish said in a news release Tuesday. Dish also added a Vevo app to its Hopper platform, it said. Netflix is available on Hopper's accompanying Joey units for second-, third- and fourth-room viewing, it said. Dish launched a Netflix app on its second-generation Hopper digital video recorder in December.

Sling TV added HBO to its programming for $15 a month, Sling TV said in a news release Thursday. Subscribers to Sling TV's Best of Live TV core package and select Sling International programming packages can now watch HBO, it said. HBO's main live channel, a VOD library and three streams of HBO are available for Sling TV customers, it said.

LightSquared filed a transfer of control application at the FCC Monday, as expected (see 1504010016), posted in inbox 63.04. "This filing is the next step in completing the company's exit from bankruptcy," a company spokesman said. If the application is granted, it will assign spectrum licenses to a reorganized LightSquared, called New LightSquared, a satellite industry lawyer said. He said New LightSquared also filed a request for an FCC declaratory to approve the reorganized company's foreign ownership, which is about 70 percent, compared with more than 80 percent in a previous plan. The application and request for declaratory ruling are fairly standard, said Butzel Long satellite lawyer Stephen Goodman, who isn't involved in the bankruptcy. “The problem is it can introduce some delay because it means the FCC will have to coordinate with the Department of Justice and the FBI,” he said. “They require you to voluntarily enter into an agreement with them so they can review the officers and directors to make sure there’s no terrorists in the organization.” This can slow down the process, he said. The FCC wouldn't comment on the application, which has not been put out on public notice.