Satellite Industry Pushing Hard for “No Change” in C-Band Allocation

[BGonaSTICK]

The commercial satellite services industry is stepping up a campaign aimed at preventing the C-band frequencies it now uses from being shared with mobile satellite services as the 2007 World Radiocommunication Conference in October draws closer.

The conference, held every four years under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), will discuss whether it is appropriate to allow terrestrial mobile networks to use the band 3.4-4.2 GHz, which is now reserved for the use of satellite operators worldwide. The satellite industry argues this sharing will cause significant harm to the communications services provided by satellite operators.

It said the 3.4-4.2 GHz frequencies are fully used by satellite operators to provide a variety of essential services, including strategic government communications, rural communications, avionics, maritime services and basic telephony. These services contribute to national economic growth, stability and social advancement.

The industry said it is technically impossible for satellite services to share frequencies with mobile services or to use other frequencies. In some areas, the industry is obliged to share its spe*ctrum with fixed wireless networks, which cause significant and harmful interference to satellite services.

SES has taken on the lead role in the international campaign to ensure no change is made in the satellite industry’s use of the C-band frequencies. It contends that the proposed terrestrial mobile services would cause harmful interference into both existing and planned satellite services.

It noted satellite services would experience signal loss, blackouts and synchronization loss. SES said it is not acceptable that mobile operators, who use only a fraction of their current spe*ctrum assignments, should try to harm satellite transmissions in this unnecessary way.

SES is asking satellite operators to lobby their national delegations to the October ITU conference to support “No Change” to the current global allocation of 3.4-4.2 GHz to the fixed satellite services.