Asian Satellite Providers Gear Up For Star Wars

An Asian regional satellite operators consortium is taking shape to challenge the dominance of Intelsat and Panamsat that have cornered a large share of orbital slots and frequencies in the region.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), the most successful Asian satellite operator is expected to play a leading role in the consortium in terms of fighting against the US, European and Russian satellite providers, which have cornered the maximum orbital slots in the region at the expense of operators from Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, India and other countries.

Sources from Measat, the Malaysian satellite services provider, said the consortium will use its collective voice to block allocation of choice slots to Western satellite providers and to give up slots which they no longer use in favour of satellite operators from the region. The use of satellite slots is governed by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) regulations and these are heavily biased in favour of commercial providers like Intelsat and Panamsat rather than satellite agencies of sovereign countries like India or Malaysia.

 

Measat, one of the main movers of the consortium idea wants to form the association by the second half of the current year.

They said while it would be virtually impossible for an Asian operator to locate its satellite over North America or Europe, the Asian space was crowded with satellites from those regions. The crowding was robbing Asian operators of geostationary slots which provided coverage over their target regions.

Isro for instance, has sought five orbital slots from ITU and its application is pending since last year. With the result, it will have to co-locate new satellites in the same orbit till the ITU gives a green signal to new slot requests. Domsat from Philippines and Thaicom from Thailand, Singtel of Singapore and Papua New Guineas Pacstar all have orbital slot requests pending with the ITU.

The ITU does not differentiate with satellite organisation of sovereign states and independent providers.

It decides orbital slots on a first-come first-serve basis and Intelsat and Panamsat, that have been in the business for long, have cornered over 75 per cent of the available slots in the Asia-pacific region simply by applying early.

The burgeoning demand for television, data transmission, internet relay and telephony in Asia has made geostationary satellite slots in the region an expensive real-estate. Western operators have drawn up huge profit projections based on transponder leases.

The regional operators want to use satellites as low cost communication devices, mainly for economic development rather than pure entertainment or commercial data transmission.