Proposed Fees to Flush Remaining Paper Networks Gets Cool Response
GENEVA -- The idea of new annual fees for satellite network filings, discussed this week at the ITU Radiocommunication Advisory Group (RAG), drew “strong concerns” and strong opposition, sources said. The new fee concept was described in the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) director’s report to the meeting.
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All comments during the RAG meeting were “strongly opposed” to a new fee concept for satellite network filings, said a participant who is skeptically watching the proposal develop. Knowing the amount of the proposed fees would be necessary to understand the effect on individual companies, he said.
ITU Council efforts to recover the costs of processing satellite network filings have limited the processing backlog resulting from so-called paper satellites (satellite projects that are filed for but never built) and have limited filings to projects with a higher likelihood of being built, the director’s report said.
The advisory group said the information in the director’s report “is particularly complex and sensitive” and is a matter under the purview of the ITU Council and the World Radiocommunication Conference, a draft meeting report said. The problem of paper satellites hasn’t been completely solved, the director’s report said. Many satellite networks are recorded in the Master International Frequency Register (MIFR), but are no longer in use, and artificially prevent new networks from having access to spectrum and orbit resources, the report said.
The new issue faced by ITU in respect of paper satellites is no longer in the incoming flow, but within the Master Register, Francois Rancy, the Radiocommunication Bureau director told a May 9 space and satellite forum in Abu Dhabi, according to his prepared remarks. Additional, effective means of preventing paper satellites from remaining in the MIFR may also be considered in relation to fees which are in force at ITU to recover the costs associated with the processing of satellite networks filing, Rancy said.
"We all know that additional regulatory, operational and/or financial measures will be needed to ensure that rights to use vital spectrum/orbit resources are not unduly kept without being used” ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure told the Eutelsat assembly of parties May 11, according to the prepared remarks.
The apparent congestion of spectrum and orbit resources prevents an increasing number of satellite networks from using them, or provides access only under precarious conditions, the report said, referring to not causing harmful interference to, nor claiming protection from, incumbent networks in the master register. “More effective means of preventing ‘paper satellites’ to remain in the MIFR should therefore be considered,” it said.
A fee model with “yearly fees” might be considered “as a way to ensure a more equitable apportionment of overall processing costs between satellite users, in particular with respect to the costs associated to the maintenance of frequency assignments during the lifetime of a satellite network,” the report said.
The ITU Council decisions on cost recovery for the processing of satellite network filings was built on costs related to the processing of new satellite network filings up to the entry of the information in the MIFR, the director’s report said. However, costs related to the maintenance of such information throughout the life of the network were not considered, even though such information is taken into account in the technical examination of new satellite networks and compatibility calculations carried out by the BR involve both the new networks as well as the networks already recorded in the MIFR, it said. As a consequence, it may be concluded that newcomers are taking on a greater financial burden than incumbents, many of which having been recorded prior to the entry into force of the ITU Council decisions on cost recovery, the director’s report said.
The BR was “on the defensive and tried to claim that this proposal would be revenue neutral to the ITU, but many did not believe it,” the participant said. The BR will try to raise support for the plan at the ITU Council, the participant said. The advisory group suggested the director consider “the strong concerns” raised by administrations about revising ITU Council decisions on cost recovery for the processing of satellite network filings, the draft meeting report said.