Communications Satellite Fleet Makes India ‘Self-Reliant’
India is “self-reliant” in the communications satellite area, Madhaven Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, told a Wednesday Washington, D.C., policy lunch. The country has a fleet of satellites carrying a total of 200 transponders, Nair said. As India builds new communications satellites, their capacity already is reserved, he said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
India’s lack of available capacity makes the western satellite industry wonder why the nation is closed to commercial communications business, said a listener. The industry sees India as an important market, Patricia Cooper, president of the Satellite Industry Association, told us. She didn’t attend the event. In December SIA complained to the U.S. Trade Representative (CD Dec 26 p12) about the Indian restrictions. “Direct-to-home licensees are not able to contract directly with foreign operators,” SIA told USTR. “The foreign satellite capacity must be procured through ISRO.”
India uses its communications satellites for two-way tele-education and tele-health work, Nair said. By linking 30,000 classrooms and 250 hospitals, India has shown “the efficacy of the system while providing services where they are really needed,” he said. India has a strong space program, Nair said: “We have confidence in building and launching satellites.”
The U.S. export-control regime, which requires domestic satellite communications companies to undergo a lengthy process to work abroad, “is rather slow,” Nair said. “I wish it were faster.” Nair said he believes that “at the political level, there is a good understanding” of how India and the U.S. can collaborate on satellite technology, but bureaucracy may bog them down. The same office that let ISRO work with Raytheon on GPS augmentation blocked a different agreement, he said. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) requires the State Department to issue an export license for communications satellite components.
Nair’s main theme was U.S.-India cooperation. That interplay is more extensive than ever, said Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Historically, even when the countries have had positive exchanges in other areas, the idea of cooperating in space has been “taboo,” but today it is less so, she said. CSIS sponsored the luncheon as part of its Global Space Agenda series.