Space Systems/Loral signed an agreement with AsiaSat to build a high-power, multi-mission satellite. The satellite, AsiaSat 9, will be used for TV broadcast, private networks and broadband services across the Asia Pacific, SSL said in a news release (http://bit.ly/Jt6Tpo). It will be located at 122 degrees east where it will replace AsiaSat 4, it said. AsiaSat 9 will be designed to operate in C, Ku and Ka bands, and it’s expected to launch in 2016, SSL said.

The correctional institutions seeking a stay of the FCC’s inmate calling service provider rules lack standing to do so, the attorney for Martha Wright told Wireline Bureau officials Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1fzibnc). “They are merely third-party beneficiaries of the unjust, unreasonable and unfair rates,” wrote the attorney for the Washington, D.C., grandmother who originally petitioned the commission for lower prison phone rates. The request for stay filed by CenturyLink should be denied because the ILEC “failed to provide any new basis for granting the Stay that was not addressed” in the order, the Wright attorney said. The petition for stay filed by Pay Tel should be dismissed because its main argument -- that it would not qualify for safe harbor rates -- “is not sufficient basis for overturning [the] three-tiered structure adopted by the FCC,” the attorney said.

Infoblox completed USGv6 certification, becoming the first network control vendor to pass USGv6 compliance, it said in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1fhEhKc). USGv6 is a standards and testing infrastructure designed to aid the U.S. government’s implementation of IPv6 (http://bit.ly/1fhEhKc). “Infoblox is responding to the global shortage of IPv4 addresses with the industry’s most advanced, interoperable solutions supporting IPv6,” said Cricket Liu, the company’s chief infrastructure officer. Infoblox used the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Laboratory for compliance testing, it said.

The FTC should move forward with its proposed study of the business practices of patent assertion entities (PAEs), Public Knowledge said Monday in comments it filed jointly with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Engine Advocacy. The FTC voted in late September to propose doing a study using its authority under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act (CD Sept 30 p15). Comments on the proposed study were due Monday. The proposed study would “bring many of these unseen practices to light, by requiring those entities to disclose relevant information about their business practices,” Public Knowledge said. “With this information, the FTC will take a first step in discovering and uncovering the true extent of the impact of patent assertion abuses on today’s economy.” The Software & Information Industry Association said it “strongly” supports the proposed study, which would “add significantly to the existing literature and evidence on PAE behavior.” There have been other studies on PAE activities, but they have focused on available litigation data, said SIIA. The FTC’s proposed study “has the opportunity to be much different and to provide a more complete picture of the PAE landscape and its detrimental effects due to the FTC’s unique Congressional authority to collect nonpublic information,” SIIA said. “Certain licensing agreements, patent acquisition information, and cost and revenue data that was not available to researchers in prior studies would be potentially available to the FTC” (http://1.usa.gov/1bUz6jC).

The urban rates survey must be completed and returned by Jan. 17, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Monday (http://bit.ly/1bUKsUS). The bureau plans to collect the rates offered by providers of fixed services identified using the most recent Form 477, with separate samples for fixed voice and fixed broadband services, it said. Providers required to complete the survey can expect to receive an email this week with an online reporting form, the notice said.

Ruckus Wireless is partnering with the city and county of San Francisco to deliver free public Wi-Fi for the city’s Market Street Corridor, said the company in a news release Monday (http://yhoo.it/1bUtENR). San Francisco’s Department of Technology and Ruckus worked in a public-private partnership to design, build and deploy the network, said Ruckus. The outdoor network will be available starting at the intersection of Market and Castro streets and continuing to the pedestrian corridor at the Embarcadero, it said. The city selected the company because it “overcomes” the physical and technical challenges of bringing wireless connectivity to outdoor environments with its high-capacity coverage requirements, Ruckus said. Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi technology is able to extend Wi-Fi signals over longer distances while adapting signals to changes to environmental conditions, said the company.

Globalstar again said adopting the rules proposed in the NPRM on allowing it to provide a terrestrial low-power broadband service would “quickly add 22 MHz to the nation’s wireless broadband spectrum inventory,” in an ex parte filing in dockets 13-213 and RM-11685 (http://bit.ly/1cMSuzh). It also would “ease the congestion that is diminishing the quality of Wi-Fi service at high-traffic 802.11 hotspots and other locations,” it said. Globalstar continued to urge the FCC to maintain its prohibition on outdoor operations in the Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure band, it said. It repeated that reassignment of Globalstar’s spectrum to Iridium “would have a disastrous effect on Globalstar’s global MSS operations and cause significant harm to public safety and the customers who rely on Globalstar’s services,” it said. The proceeding on Iridium’s petition, which seeks reallocation of Big low-earth orbit spectrum from Globalstar is still pending (CD Nov 5 p5).

DirecTV, Dish Network, Hughes and EchoStar emphasized to the FCC that changes to fee categories must reflect changes in law and regulation, and “must correspond with the number of full time employees performing specified regulatory functions for particular classes of payors,” they said in an ex parte filing in dockets 13-140, 12-201 and 08-65 (http://bit.ly/1bL8AID). The cable operators’ “parity” arguments are defective “because the commission does not regulate these two industries equally,” it said. In a separate ex parte filing in those dockets, SES, Inmarsat and Telesat cautioned the FCC against requiring non-U.S.-licensed satellite operators serving the U.S. market to pay space station regulatory fees. Foreign-licensed satellites don’t obtain Title III licenses “or receive the benefits that come with grant of a U.S. space station license,” the ex parte said (http://bit.ly/1997qZT). The only commission efforts that are solely focused on foreign satellites involve processing requests for market access, “a one-time expenditure of resources that the satellite companies argued does not justify a recurring regulatory fee,” it said. The FCC’s earth station licensing database doesn’t permit determination of whether an earth station is communicating with foreign-licensed satellites, it said. During a separate meeting, Intelsat supported reassessing fees for indirect full-time employees “that rarely work on behalf of satellite operators,” it said in an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/IQf4Mw). It also reiterated that regulatory fees should be collected from non-U.S. satellite operators with U.S. market access, it said. All the satellite companies met last week with staff from the Enforcement and International bureaus and the Office of Managing Director.

The Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition “seems to stand in stark contrast to what is in the best interests of broadcasters and broadcasting,” said NAB auction pointman Rick Kaplan in blog post on the NAB website Monday (http://bit.ly/1k9wsKg). NAB’s executive vice president was responding to testimony from EOBC Executive Director Preston Padden at a Senate hearing last week. Padden’s complaints that the incentive auction isn’t moving fast enough and could fail don’t represent the concerns of broadcasters that want to keep broadcasting, Kaplan said. The EOBC’s mission is “to make sure that its members are paid as much money as possible and paid as quickly as possible for their spectrum licenses,” said Kaplan. “The day their checks are cashed, their engagement in this auction ends; the EOBC has no interest in the subsequent repacking or consumer welfare.” NAB and the Association of Public Television Stations recognize the auction is complex, and their members don’t share Padden’s urgency, Kaplan said. Broadcasters “want to weigh the potential benefits of participation” and aren’t “quick-hit investors looking to turn a quick profit because of the government’s unique offer to buy back licenses,” said Kaplan. Congress, the FCC and the public should treat NAB and APTS rather than EOBC as representative of broadcasters, Kaplan said. EOBC’s membership is a “closely guarded secret,” Kaplan said. “I love the NAB and have the greatest respect for its leadership,” responded Padden in an email. “Auction based payments to broadcasters, based on wireless spectrum values, are the ‘incentive’ that will drive the success of the Incentive Auction and our Coalition genuinely is committed to that success."

The FCC Media Bureau is seeking comment on the way “video clips” delivered via the Internet are closed captioned, the bureau said in a public notice Friday (http://bit.ly/1k9qSYh). “We ask whether, as a legal and/or policy matter, the Commission should require captioning of IP delivered video clips.” Though full video delivered over Internet Protocol is already required to be closed captioned, the commission held off on imposing the requirement on video clips (CD April 19 p11). But consumer groups representing the hearing impaired issued a report arguing that streaming news clips are a primary source of information on sudden calamities such as the Boston marathon bombing, and the lack of captions excludes the hearing impaired (CD May 17 p7). Sens. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Edward Markey, D-Mass., authors of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, sent a letter to the FCC earlier this month asking the commission to require captions on IP video clips (http://1.usa.gov/1ejarJ3). The PN asks about the costs, benefits and technical challenges of captioning IP video clips. It also asks for information about the differences between captioning live or near-live clips -- such as news segments -- and prerecorded clips. The PN also raises the idea of requiring captions on only a subset of IP video clips. Comments are due Jan. 27, replies Feb. 26.