Mr. Hane is Counsel in the firm’s Communications practice group. He concentrates on transactions, spectrum licensing and special projects in satellite and wireless communications and electronic media distribution.

Mr. Hane has developed a unique portfolio of experience in the law, business and technology of media distribution and satellite communications and has achieved success in a number of complex spectrum allocation and licensing proceedings. As NBC’s Washington Counsel in the 1990s he played key roles in NBC’s successful efforts to eliminate outdated FCC regulations and enable the transition to digital television broadcasting.

At New World Communications Group, Mr. Hane spearheaded the company’s lobbying of the 1996 Communications Act and later shepherded the sale of the company to News Corporation through regulatory approvals, marking one of the fastest approvals of a major News Corporation acquisition in the 1990s.

Mr. Hane led domestic and international regulatory affairs for Lockheed Martin’s commercial satellite division, representing Lockheed Martin Telecommunications before the FCC, the ITU, and other regulatory agencies worldwide.

As an executive officer of Pegasus Communications, then the third largest DBS service provider in the U.S., Mr. Hane was intimately involved in the growth of satellite television into a full service multichannel video competitor. He negotiated more than a dozen transactions and strategic joint ventures while at Pegasus, and he led the team that launched the first duplex satellite broadband service to be bundled with a DBS service. He was the first to advocate use of Ka-band satellite spectrum for delivery of local broadcast stations to DBS subscribers and was among the first to propose “tweener” assignments in the DBS bands. Mr. Hane won preferred satellite licenses for Pegasus’ Ka-band fixed satellite service (FSS) satellites under two different licensing regimes and was the first to obtain rights to use Canadian satellites to broadcast into the U.S. from facilities in the U.S.

Mr. Hane represents service providers, broadcasters, technology vendors and investors in the telecommunications, media and technology sectors.

An avid technologist, Mr. Hane has been awarded three patents for satellite, wireless and digital video distribution technologies:

• Security system and method (U.S. Patent No. 7,589,626)
• System, apparatus and method for single-channel or multi-channel terrestrial communication (U.S. Patent No. 7,308,229)
• Wideband direct-to-home broadcasting satellite communications system and method (U.S. Patent No. 7,587,736)