Following an STA application a few days earlier, SIRIUS Satellite Radio has filed for another Special Temporary Authority with the FCC. This time, the STA is for an antenna to operate in the Ku band, that will act as a hub for delivering audio programming to their terrestrial repeater network.

Why is this significant? Because it's looking like Sirius is trying to get away from 3rd-party dependencies. That's a major change in their strategy.

[SES-LIC-INTR2006-01896_KuBand] (PDF)
[SES-STA-INTR2006-01897_AttachmentA] (PDF)

Sirius Satellite Radio yesterday filed for an application with the FCC for a Special Temporary Authority (STA) to operate a C-band antenna meant to improve the reliability of their telemetry operations.

Apparently Sirius has experienced several service outages as a result of technical problems with a third party fiber provider. Sirius wants to use the antenna for it's internal network - to transmit telemetry data among Sirius’ network operations centers in South America, California, New York and Florida.

[Sirius Satellite Radio STA] (PDF)
[C-band Frequency Coordination Report] (PDF)

It looks like Wistron NeWeb has been given a FCC grant for a new SIRIUS Starmate Replay.

It appears that the only change (that I can see) is that they've done away from the internal FM antenna loop. XM did this as well a while back, using the antenna and power wiring instead. Looks like Wistron is doing the same. Remember that during the NAB's test report submitted to the FCC, the 20ga wire used for FM transmitting was considered non-compliant. It appears that this is a correction for FCC compliance.

Check out the before and after pics below.

Old SIRIUS Starmate:

New SIRIUS Starmate: