Satellite

According to filings with the International Telecommunications Union, Amazon layed out plans for putting 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit with the goal of providing internet around the world. "Project Kuiper is a new initiative to launch a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world," the company said. "This is a long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet.

The following items have been adopted by the Federal Communications Commission and deleted from the list of items scheduled for consideration at the March 15 Open Meeting:

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed policy that could jeopardize the collection of vital information for weather prediction, the heads of the Commerce Department and NASA say. This data is disseminated across wireless radio frequencies known as “spectrum.” It enables transmission of information from satellites, weather balloons, ocean buoys, weather radars and other technologies that are used by government agencies and the private sector. But some of this same spectrum is coveted by commercial wireless providers for their next-generation 5G networks.

The Federal Communications Commission will soon decide whether to side with foreign satellite companies, and allow them to sell their rights to a swath of public airwaves to speed the deployment of 5G technology.  Such a sale to the nation’s biggest wireless providers could bring in as much as $40 billion—and now Congress is threatening to step in and prevent the FCC from allowing the satellite companies to pocket the money.

On Feb 27, the first six of satellites of Greg Wyler's company, OneWeb, are expected to be launched from a remote launch site in French Guiana, a key step toward building out a constellation that could eventually reach nearly 2,000. If the company's plans are successful, it would be nothing short of revolutionary: becoming one of the world’s largest providers of Internet service by building the architecture in space, allowing the billions without access to Wi-Fi to finally use the Web. “The ultimate goal is to connect every school in the world, and bridge the digital divide,” Wyler said.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the March Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Friday, March 15, 2019:

On March 15, we’ll aim to make progress on many of the issues core to the Federal Communications Commission’s mission: promoting US leadership on 5G, closing the digital divide, advancing public safety, modernizing our media rules, helping rural consumers, and more.

The recently passed 2019 Appropriations bill (the bill that avoided a second government shutdown) was a massive tome that included directing the Federal Communications Commission to provide a "full analysis" of its treatment of market modification petitions. Those are petitions by broadcasters or satellite operators or county officials to modify a market so that satellite viewers in a Nielsen market that crosses state lines can get local news and sports from TV stations from another Nielsen market in their own state instead.

Both DirecTV and long-time rival Dish Network have recently reported fourth quarter 2018 operating results and the numbers are not good. DirecTV lost 403,000 subscribers in the quarter, compared to 147,000 in the same quarter of 2017. The service is now shedding subscribers at a rate of 6.1% per quarter. The satellite operators are suffering from the same problem as cable operators are — the proliferation of broadband over-the-top (OTT) services.

The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau seeks comment on recent developments in the video description marketplace to inform a report to Congress required by the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA) on the availability, use, benefits, and costs of video description, which must be completed no later than October 8, 2019. As mandated by Congress, the FCC seeks public comment on specific issues related to video description in television programming: