Matt Daneman

The fate of the Globalstar draft order on circulation has become anyone's guess, with two commissioners having voted against it, said interested parties to the proceeding. FCC officials told us Friday that Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel had voted no and that Commissioner Mike O'Rielly hadn't voted. Commissioner Ajit Pai said Thursday he voted no (see 1606020064). Commissioner Mignon Clyburn's office didn't comment.

Fixed satellite service and terrestrial wireless camps remain at odds over whether satellite has co-primary terrestrial status, representatives from both sides said in interviews Thursday. They said the dispute is a major stumbling block to any deal between the industries on sharing high-spectrum bands for FSS and 5G. The sides made their case to the FCC in filings this week in docket 14-177. Satellite and terrestrial broadband industry officials said they expect the agency to proceed with its plan (see 1605250063) to vote at July's meeting on a spectrum frontiers NPRM.

The FCC Globalstar broadband terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) draft order on circulation (see 1605130059) is facing pushback from critics, with a number of parties in recent days meeting with officials to urge different approaches or particular safeguards. The draft order has been circulating for more than two weeks and has only Chairman Tom Wheeler's vote, with the remaining commissioners having yet to decide, informed sources told us Wednesday. The FCC said it couldn't confirm vote status.

Cable is lining up behind a joint NCTA/American Cable Association FCC petition seeking approval for emailing customers such information as instructions and services offered (see 1603080052). The proposal is "a no brainer," one lawyer with cable clients told us. The attorney said it remains to be seen whether the FCC moves on it quickly -- perhaps as a bone to throw the cable industry, which has heavily criticized Chairman Tom Wheeler of late (see 1605200037) -- or slowly -- because it has so much else on its plate.

T-Mobile said the joint AT&T/EchoStar plan to the FCC for sharing the 28 GHz band between fixed satellite service (FSS) and 5G applications (see 1604070059) is "a threat to 5G [that] undermines the utility of the millimeter wave bands for terrestrial mobile broadband operations." Meanwhile, EchoStar and other broadband satellite operators said they hashed out six principles the FCC should follow for FSS/5G sharing. "Contrary to the repeated assertions of the wireless industry, FSS is a primary service" under international and U.S. tables of frequency allocations, while decades of regulations governing 28 GHz band licensing "gives FSS express licensing priority over any terrestrial mobile service," the satellite operators said in a joint filing Friday in docket 14-177.

A joint Microsoft/Facebook fiber submarine cable linking Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Bilbao, Spain, will be one the highest-capacity subsea cables ever and is expected to be laid within 17 months, Microsoft said in a blog post Thursday. Some companies with major data needs are increasingly building their own dedicated undersea infrastructure, TeleGeography Vice President-Research Tim Stronge told us Thursday. Facebook "is at a scale where they want to own fiber pairs of their own," simplifying network design rather than having to go through a submarine cable operator, he said.

The FCC plans to tee up a Further NPRM in July that will explore freeing up yet further spectrum for wireless 5G, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said at a 5G seminar hosted Wednesday by Hogan Lovells. O'Rielly said that the current spectrum frontier proceeding is likely to pass and represents one of the few major items likely to get unanimous commissioner approval. The bands in it likely won't be sufficient to meet all 5G needs, he said.

Parts of the aviation, GPS and satellite industries have interference worries about Ligado's proposed terrestrial LTE network. They said Ligado's proposed license modifications need more changes. "There remain too many unresolved issues to alleviate the aviation sector's concerns that Ligado's proposed operations will present an unacceptable threat of harmful interference to aviation GPS receivers," several aviation companies and industry groups said in an FCC filing in docket 12-340 Monday. That was the deadline for comments on the satellite company's application to modify the ancillary terrestrial component of its L-band mobile satellite service (MSS) network. There were no petitions to deny and the company got backing from numerous filers. Replies are due June 16.

The government has an interest in fostering freedom of expression that, separate from market power questions, can and does help guide its regulatory and legal decisions, FCC General Counsel Jonathan Sallet said at a Media Institute lunch Tuesday. Saying he was giving his personal views and wasn't addressing pending FCC issues, Sallet cited numerous court decisions he said bolstered his point, with one noneconomic argument in the Supreme Court's 1997 Turner vs. FCC (II) decision. The FCC net neutrality NPRM asked questions about the effect a non-open Internet would have on free expression, Sallet said. He also noted how in the last broadcast ownership quadrennial review, the FCC kept some ownership restrictions to help foster media ownership diversity, and that in transaction reviews, the agency tries to promote competition more broadly than -- though informed by -- the antitrust analysis. He said the free flow and exchange of ideas that come with free expression is akin to the free flow of ideas in the scientific method, and it's no coincidence the Age of Enlightenment, the American Revolution and Adam Smith all followed the creation of the scientific method. Sallet took no questions. He more than once referred to the pending U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision on the net neutrality order. In the event of a D.C. Circuit decision Tuesday, he said to laughs, "I had another speech prepared."

One of Ligado's next aims is setting up a trial network to demonstrate terrestrial and satellite shared use of mid-band spectrum, CEO Doug Smith said in a blog post Monday. "This would be one of the earliest American demonstrations of an advanced next-generation network and could kick-start our mission to serve the information explosion that comes in 5G," Smith said on the day of the deadline for comments in the public notice on Ligado's proposed license modifications that would have it abandon any planned 1545-1555 MHz terrestrial downlink use (see 1604250019). With FCC approval of Ligado's plans for mid-band spectrum, "We can create a model of at least a partial 5G network -- a next-generation, hybrid satellite-terrestrial network -- that will enable 5G use cases and mobile applications that require ultra-reliable, highly-secure and pervasive connectivity," Smith said. Those modifications and power limits are among the steps Ligado has taken "to ensure satellites using other mid-band spectrum can still successfully send signals to smartphones, GPS devices and specialized industrial equipment that rely on that data," Smith said on the blog. The company said the parameters and power limit agreement struck with Deere, Garmin and Trimble point to GPS users and manufacturers not facing any Ligado interference. "Significantly, cellular devices and consumer devices representing the vast majority of the GPS market are not adversely impacted by our planned deployment," Smith said. Ligado's license modification proposal is seeing some opposition. "We have a major concern that the receivers out in the field will be affected by the Ligado signals close to L1 band as they are from our receiver point-of-view in-band interference," especially minus surface acoustic wave (SAW) filtering, U-blox America said in a filing Friday in the docket. The global navigation satellite system component maker also volunteered to provide GPS receivers for more testing involving passive antennas, no external SAW and OEM receivers without integrated SAW. It also is receiving some outside backing. James Kirkland, Trimble Navigation general counsel, called Wireless Bureau Associate Chief Charles Mathias to talk about Trimble's support of Ligado's LTE plans, said an ex parte filing Friday in docket 12-340. According to Trimble, Kirkland said Ligado has agreed to technical parameters and other conditions that are "a reasonable compromise relative to the important competing policy considerations raised by Ligado's previous proposals."