Iridium's bondholders will oppose Craig McCaw's plan to provide up to $600 million in financing for the bankrupt sat-phone company, Bloomberg reported. The group also plans to ask a judge for permission to sue Motorola, Iridium's largest shareholder. Those bondholders could file a motion today. A hearing on the financing proposal is scheduled for U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York this week. An investment group led by McCaw wants to take Iridium out of bankruptcy. While Motorola would retain a stake in a reorganized operation, it's expected that McCaw will eventually take over the troubled company. Under McCaw's plan, the interests of unsecured debt holders and holders of existing Iridium common stock would likely be worthless. Iridium owes about $1.45 billion to bondholders.

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Homeowners Group Backs Off Antenna Rules

In a victory for satellite TV consumers, a Maryland homeowners' association revised its policies last week in an effort to bring them into compliance with Federal Communications Commission rules for over-the-air reception devices. As recently as Jan. 21, the Brandywine Country Homeowners' Association issued harshly-worded covenant violation notices to homeowners the organization deemed to be in violation of association rules. The regulations covered all antennas, including satellite dishes. Last week, however, the board of directors for the homeowners association took steps to correct the situation. The board issued an apology to homeowners affected by the old rules. Under new guidelines, homeowners may install dishes without permission from the association. All costs for previous covenant violations also were waived. "This victory for consumers illustrates the importance of educated consumers," said Buddy Davis, chair of the Zoning Covenant Condition and Restriction Task Force at the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association. Davis also is president of Davis Antenna. "Satellite retailers who encounter attempts by homeowners associations wishing to impose their own restrictions and covenants on satellite consumers can learn from this example that defeating such onerous conditions is possible when the law is on your side," Davis said.

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Good News For DARS Players

Wall Street delivered good news to the two DARS players in research released last week. XM Satellite Radio was rated a new "Buy" by analyst Robert Peck at Lehman Brothers. He placed a price target on the company at $60 per share. Vijay Jayant of Bear Stearns recently initiated coverage of XM Satellite Radio with a Buy rating and a year-end price objective of $48 per share. He also reiterated a Buy rating for Sirius Satellite Radio with a price objective of $55. "We believe that satellite radio will become the third band on the radio dial, thereby increasing the options for consumers," Jayant said in research released last week. However, he said both "XM and Sirius shares, like those of any development-stage company, are likely to be milestone-driven in the near term."

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SkyBOX: Getting DirecPC Off the Red

According to the big boys at Hughes, over the next three years DirecPC will metamorphose from a stealth-to-non-marketed service for a paltry 40,000 customers to a Spaceway precursor fattened up to 1.2 million subs. And guess who's charged with achieving this magical increase? None other than newly anointed Executive Vice President Eddy Hartenstein. We wish him luck. He gonna need it. Not that we aren't fans of DirecPC. We are. BIG fans. We've used the system for over a year and have found it fast, easy to use and far more reliable than the wireheads' offerings. At least until a week ago last Friday. That's when our DirecPC signal turned red. Gone. Zippo. No snow on the dish. No cloud in the sky. No signal at all. So we called the folks at DirecPC. (Easy number...1-800-DIRECPC.) They answered promptly and responded kindly. We typed in instructions, repeated incomprehensible strings of numbers, re-checked the dish (still no snow). When the guy on the other end of the line started muttering about voltage and paperclips, we figured we were out of our league. Got our customer number and said we'd call a technician. Next day, the technician appeared. He checked our dish. (No snow.) Peered at our computer. Tested voltage. Tried out a new LNB or two. No signal. We called DirecPC. They chatted to the technician who typed in instructions, repeated incomprehensible strings of numbers and rechecked the dish. (No snow.) It must be our PC Adapter Card, said the guy at DirecPC. He gave us a number to call. We called. It's Perfect 10 where we do the department-to-department shuffle. Finally a very nice lady explains that they are wholesalers. No DirecPC subscribers allowed. Call RadioShack, she suggests. We call RadioShack. Three RadioShacks. You want a what? For what? Afraid they're on the verge of notifying the psycho squad, we get off the phone. And try our friends at Golden Sky. Ahhhh...says Golden Sky. We'll get you an adapter. Two days later, it appears on our doorstep. (Thank you, Golden Sky!) We hurry inside, pry open the computer, get that card inserted, put the computer back together, fire up the electricity and.... DirecPC is installing! Numbers are flashing! Percentages percenting! It hits 66 percent and... The computer burps. It whines. There's something it just can't find. Something with one of those Microsoft-customer-friendly names like TLFW6 XFIII4 38GFE OKAMF. The computer sighs. It freezes. Outside, little white flakes are swirling. We go skiing. And wish Eddy luck. Do you have a comment or letter for SkyBOX? Write the editors at: editor@skyreport.com.

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PEOPLE: TNT Gets Executive VP