After what it called "several challenging years," Northern Sky Research said the fixed very small aperture terminal market should rebound, with the VSAT installed base reaching 17.8 million active sites and generating $25.6 billion annually by 2026. NSR said Wednesday a key driver of that expected growth is newly available North American capacity, letting it add subscribers. The researcher expects more than 7 Tbps of new demand will be generated over the next decade due to new subscribers and their bandwidth consumption growth. It said margins will be thin due to competition. Also this week, a meeting in Washington focused on the industry.

The Ka- and Ku-bands have “served us well,” enabling satellite broadband, but “we need to grow out of them,” with the Q- and V-band critical for the industry’s additional spectrum needs, said Hughes Executive Vice President-Engineer Adrian Morris Tuesday at VSAT Congress. Citing the unified front the wireless industry presents on spectrum issues, he urged a more unified satellite voice and more cooperation between low Earth and geostationary orbit constellation interests. He said it will be tough for satellite to retain all spectrum rights, but said it will have more success with a focus on necessities. The industry needs some dedicated bands, but co-primary status “is not a bad place to be,” he said. He said Hughes is “strongly looking” at Q-band technology, in large part because Earth station hardware advanced to enable use of the band. The very small aperture terminal (VSAT) industry is struggling with data price wars squeezing mar- gins, said Susan Bull, Comsys senior consultant. Demand is growing for satellite-enabled mobile services, but they also are becoming a commoditized service, she said. Almost all 2.3 million consumer VSAT sites in service are in North America, with attempts at offering consumer services in developing markets having failed, Bull said. She said new Hughes and ViaSat efforts to expand into developing markets could succeed, though challenged by affordability issues. Bull said the industry is still struggling to see how it can compete with terrestrial data providers, especially since bandwidth around the globe sometimes is being sold way below cost. VSAT’s key problem—latency—will be tackled by low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit satellites and high-altitude platform stations, and VSATs need to bounce from LEOs to geostationary satellites, and integrate with terrestrial wireless networks, she said. The satellite industry is moving toward a configurable standard production of satellites, assembled “in a Lego-type situation,” which should drive down costs, said Bull. She said there’s growing VSAT distrust of satellite operators as the latter move into VSAT operator markets.

Noncommercial KMTP-TV San Francisco said it was denied carriage on Dish Network because it sent notice by priority express mail instead of certified mail, in an FCC carriage complaint filed by licensee Minority Television Project. “All of the information” required for carriage was provided, the broadcaster said. The FCC should order Dish to carry KMTP despite Dish’s “hyper-technical reading” of the rules, the complaint said.

NPR's public radio satellite system (PRSS) downlinks are low-powered, meaning "virtual certainty" that any terrestrial use of the 3.7-4.2 GHz band would create interference that disrupts public radio broadcasts, executives told aides to FCC Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel, recounted a docket 17-183 ex parte filing posted Wednesday. The public radio programmer said that for FY 2018, Congress approved the first of a multiyear financial contribution that will total more than $50 million to update PRSS over the next decade.

Shared mobile/satellite use of the C band under the model being pitched by Intelsat and Intel (see 1710040013) wouldn't compromise certainty, reliability or quality of broadcasting of media content to cable headends, Intelsat Senior Vice President-Sales and Marketing Kurt Riegelman blogged. He said its proposal would have satellite remain co-primary in the 3700-4200 MHz band. Riegelman said avoiding co-frequency use in certain areas but giving satellite the ability to use all 500 MHz elsewhere would preserve quality of programming distribution throughout the band. In a separate blog Tuesday, Intelsat Vice President-Spectrum Strategy Hazem Moakkit said the Intelsat/Intel plan doesn't undermine satellite rights to the C band since trying to apply that approach in other nations "is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole." He said C-band use globally generally is fragmented across numerous operators, unlike in the U.S., so the Intelsat/Intel approach is inherently impractical in other regions. Moakkit called "risk of contagion ... quite low" given the rest of the world uses the 3.4-3.6 GHz band for mobile while 3.4-3.7 GHz in the U.S. is for federal use and citizens broadband radio service. Since the C-band is a capacity band, its 5G use would only be in densely populated areas, he said. He said much of Africa, Asia and South America uses the C-band for a wide variety of services, so joint use isn't viable there.

Sling TV is available on select Samsung smart TVs, making it the first live and on-demand over-the-top service brought on to the Samsung platform, said Sling Tuesday.

Skynet Satellite wants to eke out five extra years of use for Telstar 12, it said in an FCC International Bureau application Monday asking for an extension of the satellite's license term through Nov. 30, 2022. It said the licensed term expires at month's end and extension would let it continue to provide service pending launch of a replacement satellite that has been authorized by Canada.

Planet Labs wants to use some of its Flock earth imaging constellation satellites to demonstrate automatic identification system (AIS) receiver capabilities, it said in an FCC International Bureau application Monday. It wants to equip up to three of its earth exploration satellite service satellites with a software-defined radio receiver and antenna wire tuned to receive AIS signals, with AIS data to be transmitted to Planet Earth stations.

ViaSat subsidiary ViaSat Antenna Systems and European industry will jointly work to develop components for the ViaSat-3 satellite broadband system under a public private partnership agreement between the company and the European Space Agency, ViaSat said Monday. It said the $78.8 million partnership, Project Aidan, is being co-funded by Switzerland, the Netherlands and Romania and will focus on producing fixed and mobile user terminals, including development of a fully electronic phased array, and ground segment equipment and gateways.

Two non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellations seeking U.S. market access now have it, with a pair of orders issued Friday. Space Norway's approval is conditioned on the company internationally coordinating with other operators and on the ITU giving it a favorable or "qualified favorable" rating on its equivalent power flux density limit demonstration before initiating service, the FCC said in an order. The regulator also approved a Space Norway-requested waiver of geographic coverage requirements, saying its Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission system is intended to cover only the pan-Arctic region and that would help provide connectivity to unserved and underserved areas of Alaska. In its Telesat order, the agency denied a OneWeb request that Telesat approval be conditioned on maintaining a 125 km buffer zone with other NGSO systems, saying collision concerns are best addressed "through inter-operator coordination."