Astrium will build a satellite for DirecTV, to be based on Astrium’s Eurostar E3000 platform and placed in orbit in 2016, Astrium said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1670lFc). The satellite will provide broadcast services through up to 60 Ku-band transponders to Brazil, “ensuring continuity of legacy services countrywide, while at the same time expanding into new services such as HDTV,” Astrium said. It will be capable of providing overall coverage across Brazil, “as well as regional television channels through 20 spot beams,” it said.

The FCC Media Bureau doesn’t plan to reveal the number of applications filed for new low-power FM stations before the filing window closes Nov. 14, said staff from the Audio Division. The bureau will not disclose that number “so as not to disadvantage anybody who may be applying for spectrum in certain areas” until after the close of the filing window, Jim Bradshaw, deputy chief of engineering, said Thursday during a Q-and-A webinar. If there are thousands of applications, then the bureau will likely identify singleton applications within a couple of months, he said. Many decisions could be issued the first few months of 2014, he said. Applicants can file minor amendments, but major amendments, like changing the channel position plus or minus three, must wait until after the mutually exclusive public notice is released, Bradshaw said. A university with a full-power license can apply for an LPFM license if the full-power station isn’t run by students, said Parul Desai, an attorney in the division. The new station must be student-run, but it will not qualify for a new entrant point, she added. The Form 318 application, call sign and license will be granted in three different steps, said Gary Loehrs, an engineering staff member. A board member with a past felony isn’t an automatic disqualifier for an application, but it must be disclosed, Desai said. The commission will not allow a letter from parties within an interference area to indicate willingness to accept interference, Bradshaw said. If there’s any kind of structure in interference areas, the division will assume it’s occupied as a residence or workplace, he said. Desai also reminded applicants that reasonable assurance is needed only for the antenna location and not the main studio location. The webinar was postponed from Oct. 3 due to the 16-day government shutdown (CD Oct 22 p2). It will be archived at http://www.fcc.gov/events.

ViaWest is building its latest data center in Compark Business Campus in southeast Denver, its fifth in the Denver area, said the company in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1hd6Dro). The 210,000-square-foot facility will pursue Uptime Tier IV design certification and it’s scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2014, said the company. ViaWest Compark will offer data infrastructure services and hybrid environments for cloud computing, wholesale and retail collocation and managed services and compliance solutions, said the company. ViaWest recently announced plans for a data center in Minneapolis, and opened the Lone Mountain Las Vegas data center in early 2013, said the company.

They're not fake ringing tones; they're “comfort rings” -- and Vonage wants any new rules banning them to not kick in until at least 90 days after the FCC’s call completion order is published in the Federal Register. The circulating order contains language banning the ringing tones that long-distance providers sometimes put on the line before the recipient’s phone is actually ringing. “While it presents callers with a ‘comfort ring’ infrequently on domestic calls, any change in the call logic on a large scale must be done methodically and tested prior to deployment,” the VoIP provider told a Wireline Bureau official and an aide to Commissioner Ajit Pai Wednesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1biZssV).

The global Internet Protocol video network management market is expected to double between 2012 and 2017, said a Frost and Sullivan research report released Thursday (http://yhoo.it/HdZ2Lw). The market will increase from $217.8 million in 2012 to $442.4 million in 2017, said the report. More than 70 percent of data traffic on mobile devices will be video by 2016, said the report. Probes for quality of experience and service accounted for the biggest revenue share of global IP video network management market at 53 percent in 2012, said the report. This research was part of the Digital Media Growth Partnership Service program, and it includes several market measurements from around the world.

Alcatel-Lucent’s LGS Innovations is one of the companies the U.S. Army selected for its $4.1 billion Communications and Transmissions Systems contract, said the subsidiary in a Thursday news release. Under the contract, which has a five-year performance period, LGS said it will connect U.S. Army communications systems across “integrated domains, providing the warfighter with reliable, instant access to communications worldwide.” The company said the agreement with the Army means it will compete with other contract recipients to provide integrated solutions to support the Army’s communications systems (http://bit.ly/19AN9c5).

"It is time to move forward with the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights through legislation,” wrote Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., in a Thursday letter to the White House (http://bit.ly/1cexDaf). The House Judiciary Committee member had introduced a mobile privacy bill, the Application, Privacy, Protection and Security (APPS) Act. He encouraged the White House to consider his bill “as a foundation for protecting consumers’ privacy on mobile devices.” The APPS Act was developed with public input, and would codify the NTIA’s mobile privacy guidelines developed with industry stakeholders, developers and public interest groups, he said. Johnson asked the White House to follow a similar process with its consumer privacy bill. He also encouraged the White House to “equip the FTC with the tools to operationalize the requirements and prohibitions created through a stakeholder-driven process."

Dish Network and NTelos agreed to expand their pilot program delivering broadband service in rural Virginia. The companies plan to offer the service commercially on a limited trial basis in markets including Roanoke, Staunton, Waynesboro and Charlottesville, Dish said in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/17dNkfP). They're planning to roll out the service in early 2014, “with trial services potentially reaching up to half-a-million homes,” it said. The companies also plan to install outdoor routers designed to receive a 2.5 GHz LTE signal, Dish said. The pilot is part of a plan to co-develop the service in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and other states (CD May 28 p8).

The Wilmington Network Access Point (NAP) is now operating to provide connectivity from Wilmington, Del., to Philadelphia, Georgetown, Del., and Baltimore through more than 400 strands of dark fiber, said IPR in a news release Thursday (http://yhoo.it/18P1GBv). The infrastructure-as-a-service provider received a $3.5 million grant from the state’s Delaware Infrastructure Fund to complete the project, “the first of its kind in the state,” said IPR. Sunesys and Fibertech Networks were chosen as providers to build on the NAP’s fiber capacity, said the provider. IPR said it recently installed 10 Gbps lit services from Windstream and Comcast Business, in addition to current providers including Zayo Bandwidth, Verizon Business and Level 3.

The FCC should approve station transfers related to Sinclair’s buy of Allbritton’s TV stations and ignore arguments against sharing agreements from the American Cable Association and public interest groups, said an ex parte letter (http://bit.ly/1bXo9fp) filed by shareholders of Sinclair and Allbritton parent company Perpetual Corp. The groups’ arguments against the deal’s use of sharing arrangements are that the deal “should” violate FCC rules, said the filing. “There is no discernable difference between the [sharing agreements] involved in this proceeding and those approved by the Bureau as consistent with the rules in numerous previous cases,” said the filing. Though filings by Free Press have objected to the amount of control the sharing arrangements would give Sinclair over the involved stations, the agreement is within FCC rules, said the filing. The sharing agreements “ensure that Sinclair will not have sufficient management responsibility for the Stations to gain an attributable interest in them,” said the filing. “Free Press isn’t concerned with the FCC’s current rules because it wants to change those rules,” said the filing. The commission should approve the transactions, said the filing.