Viasat's planned $7.3 billion purchase of Inmarsat, announced Monday, shouldn't face big regulatory headwinds, satellite communications industry watchers told us. Whether it's the start of more consolidation among the biggest operators is less clear.

On the contrary, Dish Network is the one that delayed and obstructed negotiations with Tegna, refusing to engage with its proposal, the broadcaster told the FCC Friday in a docket 21-413 answer and good-faith negotiations cross complaint in response to the MVPD's October complaint (see 2110180033). Dish's negotiation tactics "have made it a leader in retransmission consent disputes, with more than 200 'blackouts' in the past year alone," Tegna said. Dish said Tegna's answer and cross-complaint "is meritless and riddled with mischaracterizations and falsehoods," omitting that the TV-station owner didn't respond to Dish's proposal for close to six weeks before doing so three days before the agreement's expiration. It said Tegna communications "have been inconsistent, dilatory, and its offers repeatedly unreasonable."

Nine satellite operators submitted plans for a combined more than 38,000 non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) V-band satellites, in a series of FCC International Bureau applications and U.S. market access petitions last week in response to the V-band processing round instituted after Viasat, Mangata and AST V-band petitions (see 2108040062).

Funding is a bigger concern than adopting needed technology as rollout of the 988 call line and likely text-to-988 capabilities nears, crisis call center operators told us. They said most crisis centers anticipate sizable text volume and worry about staffing and tech resources available to manage it. FCC members will decide at their Nov. 18 meeting on requiring text providers to support texting to 988 when the three-digit nationwide suicide prevention hotline goes live on July 16 (see 2110270049).

ViacomCBS streaming audiences are growing rapidly, but so are its streaming content expenses, the company said Thursday, announcing Q3 results. CEO Bob Bakish said streaming content expenses will be double in 2021 what they were in 2020, and continue to grow to $5 billion by 2024. Overall revenue rose 13% year over year, to $6.6 billion. Streaming revenue topped $1 billion in the quarter for the first time, with a 62% increase. Global streaming subscribers exceeded 46 million, adding 4.3 million in the quarter. Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra said pay subscriber additions will be higher in Q4, due to demand for Paramount+ content. Bakish said a deal announced with T-Mobile, where every T-Mobile postpaid customer gets a free year of Paramount+ Essential, is part of the strategy of exposing consumers to Paramount+ as its content is ramped up. He said Pluto TV's lunch in Italy last week was part of the that service's international expansion, and Paramount+ will launch next year in the U.K. and Germany and be in 45 markets globally by end of 2022. ViacomCBS stock closed at $35.90, down 4.4%.

Nascent satellite operators are planning low earth orbit (LEO) IoT constellations, but experts told us to expect many to abandon constellation plans and industry consolidation. An FCC official said there's no apparent opposition among any commissioners to a draft order on Nov. 18's agenda granting U.S. market access for French IoT operator Kineis (see 2110280065). Its 25-satellite LEO constellation is scheduled to go into orbit via five launches starting in Q2 2023.

Cable ISPs enjoy regulatory fee favoritism from a court decision that the Cable Act preempts states and localities from levying cable regulatory fees on non-cable services provided using cable networks (see 210526003), said localities and allies in a petition for writ of certiorari filed Monday with the Supreme Court. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision is at odds with an Oregon Supreme Court ruling, and that conflict needs resolution, said the petitions, which include Eugene, Oregon; Boston; Fairfax County, Virginia; Maryland's Anne Arundel, Howard and Prince George's counties; Hawaii; and NATOA. They urged SCOTUS to provide clarity on implied preemption. The FCC and NCTA didn't comment. NATOA General Counsel Nancy Werner told us the FCC's cable local franchise authority order and the 6th Circuit's subsequent upholding of much of it complicated LFA renewal negotiations, with parties having to negotiate for different scenarios, depending on what the 6th Circuit might do. She said localities have significant concerns about how the LFA order might affect budgets, but the 6th Circuit's ruling that calculating franchise fees must be based on cable operators' marginal costs instead of market value of what's provided softened the blow. Many local franchise obligations probably have no marginal cost to cable operators, she said.

Charter Communications will launch a field trial early next year that pairs its Wi-Fi service with citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) band small cells for mobile subscribers, letting it offload wireless traffic that otherwise would be on Verizon's network through the companies' mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement. The test will involve thousands of pole-mounted small cellsites in an unnamed designated market area, CEO Tom Rutledge said Friday as the company announced Q3 results. Charter bought 210 licenses in 106 counties in the 2020 CBRS auction. Rutledge said Wi-Fi with CBRS has "an opportunity to make a significant change" in how much traffic is on Charter's network vs. using the MVNO.

Comcast continued a 20-year run adding at least a million residential broadband subscribers a year, though its Q3 2021 adds were slower than Q3 2019, the company said Thursday announcing quarterly results. It added 281,000 residential broadband customers during the quarter, lower than the 359,000 added in Q3 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said growth of lower-income subscribers was slower due to wireless competition drawn by government programs like the emergency broadband benefit and lower churn across broadband providers meaning "less jump balls, where we do well." With Comcast having 1.1 million broadband adds so far this year, it still has a long runway of future connectivity growth, he said. New Street Research's Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors that the softer broadband adds weren't surprising and Wall Street consensus is a further slowdown from the pace of growth in this Q3 is likely. Comcast ended the quarter with 29.4 million residential broadband customers, up 1.6 million year over year, 17.8 million residential video customers, down 1.4 million, and 9.2 million residential voice customers, down 500,000. It has 3.7 million wireless lines, up 1.1 million. Revenue of $30.3 billion was up $4.8 billion. EO Brian Roberts said Comcast sees big potential to gain share in business services with its purchase earlier this month of software-defined networking and cloud platforms company Masergy. It said the 285,000 wireless customers added in Q3 was its best quarter since the 2017 launch of the wireless business. Roberts said the low penetration by its wireless offerings among its broadband customers means its wireless business has room to grow. MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote in a note that Comcast seems to be pointing to a slowdown in broadband growth in Q4.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline "needs considerably more resources" at its crisis centers to respond to text and chat volume now, and will need more staffing and training when the ability to text to 988 is fully implemented nationwide, Lifeline administrator Vibrant Emotional Health emailed us Thursday. The FCC will vote Nov. 18 on setting a July 16 deadline for carriers to support texting to 988 (see 2110270049). The draft order was released Thursday.