Satellite

Early signs suggest the legal fight over AT&T’s $85 billion Time Warner takeover will focus heavily on the small screen, drawing much of its evidence from the companies’ video rivals. Those competitors argue the telecom company will use Time Warner’s entertainment assets against them.

Apparently, an expensive, highly classified US spy satellite is presumed to be a total loss after it failed to reach orbit atop a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. rocket on Jan 7. Lawmakers and congressional staffers from the Senate and the House have been briefed about the botched mission, some of the officials said. The secret payload—code-named Zuma and launched from Florida on board a Falcon 9 rocket—is believed to have plummeted back into the atmosphere, they said, because it didn’t separate as planned from the upper part of the rocket.

Internet access beamed down from space could drastically change the way we get online. Establishing quality high-speed satellite internet from low or medium earth orbit (LEO and MEO, respectively) would give whoever did it access to all 4 billion or so people who don't have Internet access yet. With enough bandwidth, such a network could become instant competitors to telecoms like AT&T and Verizon without the monumental infrastructure costs of putting down fiber. There are eight companies currently shooting for the goal, 2018 will be a big year for all of them.

The Federal Communications Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that explores ways to enable pay-tv providers (multichannel video programming distributors in regulatoryspeak), such as cable and satellite providers, to communicate with their subscribers in more efficient and less costly ways. Specifically, the Notice proposes to allow cable operators to send general written notices to subscribers by email, as long as they use a verified email address and comply with other consumer safeguards.

AT&T and Time Warner said an explosion of online programming has spawned a “golden age for television—and for consumers,” in its first court filing countering government claims that their planned merger would stymie competition and hurt customers. AT&T, in a formal written answer to the lawsuit, said the video marketplace is changing quickly and is “intensely competitive,” and that nothing about the Time Warner deal would harm that. AT&T said online rivals like Netflix and Amazon were spending billions of dollars on developing and streaming video content, and that leading tech c

The Justice Department is encouraging AT&T to address antitrust officials’ concerns about the $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner before the Nov. 23 Thanksgiving holiday or face a lawsuit to block the deal. The Justice Department wants to keep AT&T, the biggest US satellite-TV provider, from gaining Time Warner cable networks like TNT and CNN and then withholding their programming from competitors such as Comcast. AT&T has said it has no incentive to do that.

As the Justice Department prepares for a legal showdown with AT&T over its $85 billion bid for Time Warner, analysts are debating whether the acquisition has potential harms for consumers and business competition that could sink the deal in court. One central concern at Justice is that AT&T could seek to deny other providers of TV and Internet, such as Comcast and Verizon, access to Time Warner's programming, and that it could prevent the rise of new technologies aimed at delivering content to consumers. Time Warner owns a substantial library of content. Under AT&T's control, th

[Commentary] As nearly all usable radio spectrum has been allocated to particular uses and assigned to particular users, shifting spectrum toward modern uses almost certainly requires taking from one use or user to give to other uses and users. Such spectrum repurposing need not be contentious and is often successful. The recent $41 billion AWS-3 spectrum auction, the largest-grossing auction in history, involved spectrum repurposed from Federal government incumbents to mobile wireless providers. Yet, success is not guaranteed.

Spectrum, like land, is typically “zoned” to particular uses that play nice together. For instance, a relatively low-powered satellite signal might be drowned in a sea of high-powered, land-based cellular signals. Like small and big dogs being kept separate at a dog park, different types of radio signals are managed to mitigate conflict using technical means such as power limitations and boundaries between interfering frequencies or assigning users and uses varying degrees of priority. Before one can reassign satellite spectrum to terrestrial wireless broadband use, therefore, one must seek permission from the FCC: terrestrial services are prone to interfering with satellite signals, so an approval requires a demonstration that interference with others is not a problem.

[Dr. George S. Ford is Chief Economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies]

The Federal Communications Commission has granted an experimental license for Project Loon, led by Google's parent company Alphabet, to help provide emergency cellular service in Puerto Rico.

“More than two weeks after Hurricane Maria struck, millions of Puerto Ricans are still without access to much-needed communications services,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “That’s why we need to take innovative approaches to help restore connectivity on the island. Project Loon is one such approach. It could help provide the people of Puerto Rico with access to cellular service to connect with loved ones and access life-saving information. I’m glad the FCC was able to grant this experimental license with dispatch and I urge wireless carriers to cooperate with Project Loon to maximize this effort’s chances of success.” Project Loon is a network of balloons that provides connectivity to users on the ground. Now that the experimental license has been approved, it will attempt to initiate service in Puerto Rico. Project Loon obtained consent agreements to use land mobile radio (LMR) radio spectrum in the 900 MHz band from existing carriers operating within Puerto Rico.

Thousands of new satellites are expected to be launched into low-Earth orbit in the coming years to provide high-speed broadband, and the projects have caused concern for experts and government officials who worry about a worsening space debris problem. As the Federal Communications Commission considers satellite applications from SpaceX, OneWeb, Boeing, and others, Sens Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) senators asked the FCC to coordinate with other agencies to prevent space debris.