Iridium unveiled Iridium Burst, a global data broadcast service that will allow companies, government agencies, militaries and other entities to send data to an unlimited number of devices anywhere on Earth, including inside buildings and vehicles or on aircraft. Iridium Burst, launched Monday, operates in Iridium’s licensed L band and uses spectrum that the company has used traditionally for its paging service, said Daniel Tillet, Iridium product line management director. “We realized there were more things that we could do with it that would make it even more valuable,” he said in an interview. It’s available as a pay-per-use service compatible with the Iridium 9602GDB receiver. Iridium offers a receiver the size of a matchbox that can be embedded in other companies’ products to use for Burst, he said. Some Iridium partners, such as NAL Research, are developing their own receivers to take advantage of Burst, he said. Satellite capabilities, like a global broadcast service, can play a major role in providing satellite services as an ancillary capability to terrestrial and other providers’ services, Tillet said. “Burst is a service that has been included in some of the things we've provided related to FirstNet,” he said, referring to the FCC’s proposed public safety network. Iridium also plans to establish Global Maritime Distress and Safety System services, he said. “Our intention is to incorporate Burst into the package of services that would be brought to bear to offer GMDSS.” NAL Research plans to offer the service to the U.S. military, said Ngoc Hoang, NAL Research president. “Our main application is to receive incoming messages anywhere on the globe,” he said. The major advantage from Burst is that it doesn’t give out a radio frequency signature, he said. “The hardware we developed has no transmitters at all and it’s truly a receive-only device.” With Burst, it’s very easy for potential users “to do due diligence and to evaluate whether it’s a solution for them because it’s a simple receive device and it’s a very easy service to send messages to,” Tillet said.

The outlook for global satellite industry revenue is expected to improve this year, Credit Suisse analysts said in a report (http://bit.ly/1iy6vml). Last year, the industry was affected by Department of Defense spending cuts, launch delays and Africa and Middle East oversupply, the analysts said. The analysts “expect U.S. budgetary pressure to ease over 2014 while we continue to expect overall global capacity demand to exceed global supply from 2015,” they said. Direct-to-home capacity freed up by higher compression techniques and a reduction in time-shifted standard definition (SD) broadcasting “will be redeployed to boosting SD picture quality and increasing HD/4K channels as the cost of 4K TV sets falls.” High throughput constellations from Inmarsat, O3b Networks, Intelsat and Iridium will drive accelerating data demand, they said. “Just as in the terrestrial (wireline and mobile) world of developed markets, we expect demand for high-speed data to accelerate in the global satellite industry.”

Washington phone companies returned $348,000 to customers last year stemming from complaints filed with the state’s Utilities and Transportation Commission, said the UTC. The refunds and bill credits were the largest dollar amount for any sector regulated by the agency, said its annual analysis of complaints, which was released Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/1g7hP6C). Phone companies were second, after electricity and natural gas companies, in generating the highest number of complaints.

Iridium unveiled its portable satellite hotspot that enables voice and data communications on smartphones and tablets anywhere in the world. The product, Iridium GO!, “creates a satellite-backed Wi-Fi zone anywhere on the planet,” enabling up to five smartphones to make calls, get email, text and use some apps, “even when terrestrial networks are non-existent, unreliable or costly,” Iridium said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1g2coGi). It allows users to use their own trusted devices even when they are off the cellular grid without the need for a satellite phone, Iridium said. The company is licensing the capability to allow app developers to utilize the Iridium satellite network through Iridium GO! “to tailor their products to meet the needs of organizations or individuals, and extend the capabilities of the product even further,” it said.

Intelsat reiterated its support for increasing earth station fees to better capture the work done by full-time employees on behalf of FCC International Bureau licensees. The company continued urging the commission to consider collecting regulatory fees from non-U.S. licensed satellite operators with U.S. market access, it said in an ex parte filing in dockets 13-140, 12-201 and 08-65 (http://bit.ly/1aonWFz). Last year, two-thirds of the work conducted by the bureau on behalf of applicants filing for new satellites benefited non-U.S. licensed satellite operators, it said. “Yet, U.S. satellite licensees were the ones who paid the agency’s costs associated with the work done for the benefit of those non-U.S.-licensed operators.” The filing recounts a meeting last week with staff members from the Office of Managing Director and from the Enforcement and International bureaus.

Gilat and Thaicom launched an integrated solution using Gilat’s SkyEdge II-c very small aperture terminal satellite ground equipment and Thaicom’s Ipstar satellite. The service will enhance broadband connectivity across the Asia-Pacific region, Gilat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1fGT3LU). The companies plan to do seminars in Jakarta, Indonesia, “where they will demonstrate how the service greatly improves Internet connectivity in the region,” Gilat said.

Globecomm extended its contract with Avanti to deploy satellite broadband services to thousands of businesses in South Africa. Ka-band connectivity will be available through capacity on the Hylas 2 satellite, Globecomm said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1nwTBbs). “The partnership will be based on the Hughes platform and will extend beyond South Africa later this year.”

In BSkyB’s “very good” fiscal first half and Q2, “customers have been voting with their feet,” in that “more have been joining Sky, and they're taking more from us,” CEO Jeremy Darroch said Thursday on a quarterly earnings call. “That’s resulted in our highest rate of organic product growth in seven quarters,” characterized by “strong demand across the board,” Darroch said. During Q2, Sky surpassed “the milestone” of 5 million HD customers, marking “a good quarter for TV,” Darroch said. “But we also had another good quarter in home communications, where customers continue to switch from other providers to save money with Sky.” The company estimates that 36 percent of its customer base now subscribes to its “triple play” offering of TV, phone and broadband, “and in the last 12 months alone, we've added more than 900,000 broadband customers,” Darroch said. Sky is “particularly pleased” with the return on its investment in new services, Darroch said. “After a record quarter of growth in connected boxes, Sky is now Britain’s and Ireland’s biggest connected TV platform,” he said. The company installed more than a million connected set-tops in Q2 for an average of 11,000 a day, reaching a total base of 4.4 million by the end of December, he said. “We're finding that customers really love the benefits that come with our connected box.” For example, “on-demand usage” more than tripled year on year, including a record 12.5 million downloads “in the Christmas week alone,” he said. The number of movie rentals through Sky Store also “has doubled, due to the popularity of a number of titles,” he said. “We're starting to see the benefits of this investment flow through to the business. Connected customers are more loyal, more willing to spend more money with Sky and they're upgrading to higher-tier packages. They're also 40 percent more likely to recommend Sky to their friends.” For 2014 and beyond, “we feel very good about the opportunities for our business,” Darroch said. “We see significant headroom for growth in our core subscription products. By innovating across different platforms, we're also opening up the market and creating more ways to reach customers than ever before.” For example, Sky thinks it can “build new revenues” through Sky Store by “accelerating the move away from physical DVDs to digital formats,” he said. “Taken together, these present a significant growth opportunity, and we've got a strong set of plans in 2014 to begin to exploit it.” The company’s “first priority” is extending its “on screen” leadership, he said. On that score, its new expanded partnership with HBO is “a big step forward,” he said. The agreement extends Sky’s role as the exclusive distributor of HBO programming in Britain and Ireland “through to the end of the decade,” he said. The two companies also have pledged to “co-produce major new cinematic drama series,” he said. Darroch sees no reason why Sky can’t build its triple-play subscription penetration higher than the 36 percent of the customer base that it is today, he said in Q-and-A, though conceding penetration growth has slowed in recent quarters. “If you look at the cable network in the U.K., they're already achieving penetrations north of 60 percent, so those sorts of numbers will be good things to shoot for.”

JetBlue Airways is weighing “strategic options” for its LiveTV in-flight entertainment subsidiary as it seeks to increase deployments of the service, Chief Financial Officer Mark Powers said Wednesday on an earnings call. Powers didn’t disclose the options being considered, but analysts have speculated that they could include a spin-off of LiveTV. In addition to providing satellite TV, radio and movies, LiveTV is deploying ViaSat’s Ka-band broadband service with JetBlue, which sells it under the Fly-Fi brand and has installed it on 10 Airbus A320-232 airplanes since December, JetBlue CEO David Barger said. JetBlue will retrofit about 15 A-320 planes per month this year with the service, he said. JetBlue will add Fly-Fi to its Embraer E-190 jets in 2015, Barger said. Fly-Fi’s basic Simply Surf service is free through June, with a Fly-Fi Plus high-bandwidth plan for streaming movies and large downloads available for $9 per hour, JetBlue said. “Connectivity is such an important product for us,” Powers said. “In-flight entertainment and broadband are core to the JetBlue brand, but you don’t need to actually own the company to retain that core asset. So we will continue to look at strategic options that are in the best interests for, amongst others, our shareholders.” LiveTV was purchased by JetBlue in 2002 and has its headquarters in Melbourne, Fla. JetBlue last weighed options for LiveTV in 2012, but postponed a decision amid a debate over Ku- and Ka-band satellite services, an issue that was resolved with the launching of ViaSat’s Ka-band offering. In addition to JetBlue, LiveTV’s other customers include Azul Brazilian Airlines, Frontier Airlines, WestJet, United Airlines and Virgin Australia. LiveTV also is outfitting United Airlines planes with the ViaSat service. DirecTV provides the satellite television service for LiveTV in the U.S., while Bell TV is the supplier in Canada. In addition to LiveTV, other in-flight entertainment suppliers include Panasonic Avionics Corp., Rockwell Collins and Thales Group.

Dish Network for about a year has been an “innovator” in “national demographic-addressable advertising,” Warren Schlichting, senior vice president-media sales and analytics, told a recent New York media briefing. Analysts speculate that’s the type of technology Dish will contribute to its partnership with DirecTV, disclosed Monday, to offer a platform for household-tailored ads by political campaigns (CD Jan 28 p6). Of demographic-addressable advertising, “that’s a lot of words strung together there, but what it means is we can actually send an ad to your DVR, just like someone would send a piece of direct mail to your post box,” said Schlichting, a former Comcast executive, at a pre-CES briefing Dec. 11 in New York. “That has been the long-sought-after holy grail of advertising, and it’s gotten a terrific response in the ad industry.” Of all the “advanced advertising products” he has worked on over the years, including in his Comcast career, “this is the only product that has met its first-year projections,” Schlichting said, without saying how much revenue Dish draws from the technology. “If you look at folks who do heavy direct mail, they do list matches -- anonymous, respecting the privacy of the recipient -- and we do exactly the same thing with many of the same data companies.” Whatever the advertiser, “we'll actually send an ad that’s specifically targeted to your household demographics,” he said. “It might be age, income, presence of kids, presence of pets. All told, I think we offer over 600 targeting parameters, eight or 10 of those are the most common.” Dish regards the technology as a “win-win” for advertisers and their targeted consumers, Schlichting said. “It’s much better for the advertiser, because you're not going to have all these folks who are not going to buy your product receiving the ad. From the consumer standpoint, if you're eligible to buy that product, you're going to be more engaged in the advertising itself. It’s not something where the ad necessarily will just wash over you. So we think it works for both our subscriber experience, and obviously the advertisers are just tickled about it.”