In BSkyB’s “very good” fiscal first half and Q2, “customers have been voting with their feet,” in that “more have been joining Sky, and they're taking more from us,” CEO Jeremy Darroch said Thursday on a quarterly earnings call. “That’s resulted in our highest rate of organic product growth in seven quarters,” characterized by “strong demand across the board,” Darroch said. During Q2, Sky surpassed “the milestone” of 5 million HD customers, marking “a good quarter for TV,” Darroch said. “But we also had another good quarter in home communications, where customers continue to switch from other providers to save money with Sky.” The company estimates that 36 percent of its customer base now subscribes to its “triple play” offering of TV, phone and broadband, “and in the last 12 months alone, we've added more than 900,000 broadband customers,” Darroch said. Sky is “particularly pleased” with the return on its investment in new services, Darroch said. “After a record quarter of growth in connected boxes, Sky is now Britain’s and Ireland’s biggest connected TV platform,” he said. The company installed more than a million connected set-tops in Q2 for an average of 11,000 a day, reaching a total base of 4.4 million by the end of December, he said. “We're finding that customers really love the benefits that come with our connected box.” For example, “on-demand usage” more than tripled year on year, including a record 12.5 million downloads “in the Christmas week alone,” he said. The number of movie rentals through Sky Store also “has doubled, due to the popularity of a number of titles,” he said. “We're starting to see the benefits of this investment flow through to the business. Connected customers are more loyal, more willing to spend more money with Sky and they're upgrading to higher-tier packages. They're also 40 percent more likely to recommend Sky to their friends.” For 2014 and beyond, “we feel very good about the opportunities for our business,” Darroch said. “We see significant headroom for growth in our core subscription products. By innovating across different platforms, we're also opening up the market and creating more ways to reach customers than ever before.” For example, Sky thinks it can “build new revenues” through Sky Store by “accelerating the move away from physical DVDs to digital formats,” he said. “Taken together, these present a significant growth opportunity, and we've got a strong set of plans in 2014 to begin to exploit it.” The company’s “first priority” is extending its “on screen” leadership, he said. On that score, its new expanded partnership with HBO is “a big step forward,” he said. The agreement extends Sky’s role as the exclusive distributor of HBO programming in Britain and Ireland “through to the end of the decade,” he said. The two companies also have pledged to “co-produce major new cinematic drama series,” he said. Darroch sees no reason why Sky can’t build its triple-play subscription penetration higher than the 36 percent of the customer base that it is today, he said in Q-and-A, though conceding penetration growth has slowed in recent quarters. “If you look at the cable network in the U.K., they're already achieving penetrations north of 60 percent, so those sorts of numbers will be good things to shoot for.”

JetBlue Airways is weighing “strategic options” for its LiveTV in-flight entertainment subsidiary as it seeks to increase deployments of the service, Chief Financial Officer Mark Powers said Wednesday on an earnings call. Powers didn’t disclose the options being considered, but analysts have speculated that they could include a spin-off of LiveTV. In addition to providing satellite TV, radio and movies, LiveTV is deploying ViaSat’s Ka-band broadband service with JetBlue, which sells it under the Fly-Fi brand and has installed it on 10 Airbus A320-232 airplanes since December, JetBlue CEO David Barger said. JetBlue will retrofit about 15 A-320 planes per month this year with the service, he said. JetBlue will add Fly-Fi to its Embraer E-190 jets in 2015, Barger said. Fly-Fi’s basic Simply Surf service is free through June, with a Fly-Fi Plus high-bandwidth plan for streaming movies and large downloads available for $9 per hour, JetBlue said. “Connectivity is such an important product for us,” Powers said. “In-flight entertainment and broadband are core to the JetBlue brand, but you don’t need to actually own the company to retain that core asset. So we will continue to look at strategic options that are in the best interests for, amongst others, our shareholders.” LiveTV was purchased by JetBlue in 2002 and has its headquarters in Melbourne, Fla. JetBlue last weighed options for LiveTV in 2012, but postponed a decision amid a debate over Ku- and Ka-band satellite services, an issue that was resolved with the launching of ViaSat’s Ka-band offering. In addition to JetBlue, LiveTV’s other customers include Azul Brazilian Airlines, Frontier Airlines, WestJet, United Airlines and Virgin Australia. LiveTV also is outfitting United Airlines planes with the ViaSat service. DirecTV provides the satellite television service for LiveTV in the U.S., while Bell TV is the supplier in Canada. In addition to LiveTV, other in-flight entertainment suppliers include Panasonic Avionics Corp., Rockwell Collins and Thales Group.

Dish Network for about a year has been an “innovator” in “national demographic-addressable advertising,” Warren Schlichting, senior vice president-media sales and analytics, told a recent New York media briefing. Analysts speculate that’s the type of technology Dish will contribute to its partnership with DirecTV, disclosed Monday, to offer a platform for household-tailored ads by political campaigns (CD Jan 28 p6). Of demographic-addressable advertising, “that’s a lot of words strung together there, but what it means is we can actually send an ad to your DVR, just like someone would send a piece of direct mail to your post box,” said Schlichting, a former Comcast executive, at a pre-CES briefing Dec. 11 in New York. “That has been the long-sought-after holy grail of advertising, and it’s gotten a terrific response in the ad industry.” Of all the “advanced advertising products” he has worked on over the years, including in his Comcast career, “this is the only product that has met its first-year projections,” Schlichting said, without saying how much revenue Dish draws from the technology. “If you look at folks who do heavy direct mail, they do list matches -- anonymous, respecting the privacy of the recipient -- and we do exactly the same thing with many of the same data companies.” Whatever the advertiser, “we'll actually send an ad that’s specifically targeted to your household demographics,” he said. “It might be age, income, presence of kids, presence of pets. All told, I think we offer over 600 targeting parameters, eight or 10 of those are the most common.” Dish regards the technology as a “win-win” for advertisers and their targeted consumers, Schlichting said. “It’s much better for the advertiser, because you're not going to have all these folks who are not going to buy your product receiving the ad. From the consumer standpoint, if you're eligible to buy that product, you're going to be more engaged in the advertising itself. It’s not something where the ad necessarily will just wash over you. So we think it works for both our subscriber experience, and obviously the advertisers are just tickled about it.”

Intelsat requested a 30-day special temporary authority to use its Castle Rock, Colo., Ku-band earth station, it said in an application to the FCC International Bureau (http://bit.ly/1b23kOp). Intelsat plans to use the earth station to provide launch and early orbit phase services for the TurkSat-4A satellite expected to launch Feb. 14, it said.

Consolidated reporting, limiting evidentiary information required for satellite construction milestones and other modifications proposed by Inmarsat can help improve the efficiency of the FCC International Bureau’s processes, Inmarsat said in a letter in docket 12-267 (http://bit.ly/1jsRhBK). The bureau should encourage parties to submit draft orders to speed resolution of contested matters, maintain a list on the bureau website of the orbital locations and frequency bands currently authorized by the commission, and recognize and support use of industry-led solutions to public interest issues, it said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed Dish Network’s petition for review of the FCC’s interpretation of the federal common law of agency, that a seller may be vicariously liable for violations committed by telemarketers initiating calls to market the seller’s product. A panel of judges determined Wednesday that the issues “do not warrant a published opinion,” it said in a judgment from judges Merrick Garland, Judith Rogers and Harry Edwards (http://bit.ly/LYHHZP). The panel said the court lacks jurisdiction to review the FCC’s guidance. The case stemmed from a Justice Department complaint against Dish for alleged do-not-call violations, which included pre-recorded messages made by third parties on Dish’s behalf. Petitions filed by Dish for declaratory ruling on Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules followed in 2011 (CD Sept 4/12 p7). The FCC issued its declaratory ruling last year, saying “the seller has the ability, through its authorization, to oversee the conduct of its telemarketers, even if that power to supervise is unexercised.” (http://fcc.us/LZipKV). “This court has jurisdiction to review only ‘final orders’ of the FCC,” the judgment said. “The FCC agrees that the ‘guidance’ in question has no binding effect on courts,” it said.

KOB Albuquerque seeks to license a Ku-band transportable transmit-only earth station, it said in an application to the FCC International Bureau (http://bit.ly/LUtlcJ). The facilities will be used to provide news and event coverage via digital video and audio to the station, it said.

Gilat got a contract to provide satellite services to the Israeli government. Over three years, Gilat will supply fixed and satellite-on-the-move communications services based on Gilat Satellite Networks equipment, Gilat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1moYuzN). The deal includes very small aperture terminals and low-profile and tracking satellite antennas “ensuring high-availability communications for the various government offices on a daily basis, as well as in emergency conditions,” it said.

The Satellite Industry Association applauded the passage of HR-3547, The Consolidated Appropriations Act, which included a provision to extend the commercial space launch indemnification. The three-year extension “ensures the continuation of a long-standing provision needed to help ensure the global competitiveness of U.S. companies,” SIA said in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/1b8GRz1). The provision continues a risk management regime requiring launch service providers to acquire private launch insurance against the possibility of third party damages in the event of a failure involving government or commercial satellites, it said. But it offers government indemnification “for any such damages in excess of the required private launch insurance limits,” SIA said.

International Launch Services plans a 2015 launch of the Eutelsat 9B satellite. Eutelsat 9B is a high-capacity Ku-band satellite, ILS said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1j7EvZk). It will have 66 transponders that will deliver to Eutelsat enhanced performance for broadcasting at the established 9 degrees east location, it said. The satellite also will host the first data relay payload for the European Data Relay Satellite System, ILS said.