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Imagine you are a European satellite operator looking to sell your capacity and land signals into a given region or territory. You’ve got the necessary ground segment and orbital resources in place, your mandatory International Telecommunication Union (ITU) filing secured and coordination in progress. If you were looking to wholesale the capacity only in Europe, you’d be mostly free to proceed.

But not in other regions – at least not until you’ve obtained the appropriate ‘landing rights’ to authorize it, like in North America, from the U.S. and Canadian regulators. Taking the Americas as an example, imagine you want to extend your coverage south and serve the adjacent territory of Mexico. Not only do you have to obtain yet another landing rights authorization from the country’s regulator, but you will also need to establish a local company or agent for making the request. The same applies in Brazil and several others in Latin America. All of a sudden, what seemed like another application form has turned into an unexpectedly complex and burdensome process, bringing various legal, regulatory and corporate demands. 

Landing Rights 101

You can see why many operators see the obtaining of landing rights as a major obstacle to global expansion. Essentially referring to permissions granted by a sovereign state’s regulatory authority, they are a form of national approval for making available a foreign satellite’s capacity within its national territory. Only then can the local services or ground devices using your satellite, or constellation of satellites, be exploited by interested customers, and other clearances be secured.

Initially devised to favor domestic satellite capacity over foreign competition, landing rights typically sit independently from the other forms of national authorizations, including the radio spectrum used by connecting ground devices, and the sale of downstream services – think internet access, or data. Landing rights also remain separate from the filing procedures of the ITU, so even if your satellite network is duly registered with the ITU, these territorial rights must still be obtained from each country enforcing them.

Definitions and authorizations may differ, but one thing most businesses can agree on is that landing rights can quickly become a thorn in the side of achieving successful commercialization and return on investment. Obtaining them can often be arduous, yet they’re unavoidable for operators with global ambitions, regardless of whether they wholesale pure bandwidth capacity or sell hardware and services directly to the customer.

Moving Beyond Monopolies

If satellite landing rights feel archaic, it’s because they are: many of the rules relating to them come from the age where satellite systems were predominantly owned by national governments or inter-governmental organizations, like Intelsat and Eutelsat.

The 1980s were the era of ‘closed skies’ policies, where national governments across the globe restricted service providers to using capacity from locally-owned systems. However, the 1990s quickly saw a change to the established status quo. Through the increased liberalization of telecoms markets in the 1990s, coupled with the privatization of satellite systems and the emergence of independent satellite operators, administrations began to authorize non-governmental operators of satellite capacity through ‘open skies’ policies.

This change of approach followed the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Telecommunications, which was concluded on February 15, 1997, and put into effect from February 5, 1998. The agreement was brought to life by 68 countries who pledged in varying degrees to open their markets to foreign competition. Commitments were made to abolish measures preventing free selection between all satellite resources, no matter who owned them. This landmark decision served to enhance market competition, service quality and reduce prices for local users. As the deal was concluded, one analyst commented that “the old paradigm of monopolies confined within national frontiers is out; a new model of cross-border competition is in.”

The Regional Distinctions

From that moment, open skies policies became more commonplace. This was especially true in Europe, which first embraced the principle when it was adopted in the European Union’s regulatory framework under EC Directive 2002/77/EC. As a result, landing rights were in principle phased-out across the continent.

Not every region followed suit, however. We’ve already mentioned North and South America, but many other countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region still limit open skies through landing rights regimes. Because international institutions like the ITU or WTO haven’t produced a common definition of the term ‘landing rights’, it also means that labels to describe this authorization vary.

It’s not just the terminology either – the procedures, criteria and time-frames for landing rights also differ hugely. From countries like Saudi Arabia, offering a streamlined process more akin to registration, to the more detailed and multi-staged licensing models in the United States and other jurisdictions.  Navigating these disparities can easily become a headache for operators.

As mentioned earlier, certain countries, also including Indonesia, require a local incorporated entity to obtain the landing rights on behalf of a foreign operator, meaning businesses must first establish a subsidiary, or work with a local entity or partner to proceed. This undoubtedly serves to inject further costs and lead-times into what is already a resource-intensive process.

Promising Signs

However, we are starting to see some changes in how countries grant authorization, and the historical purpose of landing rights has evolved over the years to something different and more pragmatic today. Various regulators and governments are recognizing that soft touch, low cost, and simplified landing rights, such as registrations or automatic grants, can yield useful regulatory benefits at the national level. For example, regulators can have greater oversight over the foreign satellites operating within their jurisdiction, and the market more certainty as to the capacity available. The transparency and oversight achieved through efficient landing rights can also mean it is quicker for the regulator to manage and resolve any unlawful use, interferences and coordination via the appropriate mechanisms.

This has meant that, while countries like Argentina have taken measures to abolish or modify existing procedures in favor of lighter touch models, other countries are adopting a form of landing rights into their frameworks despite not previously requiring them, as with Saudi Arabia (CST) introducing a new registration procedure in 2022. As another example, Tanzania (TCRA) proposed its own new guidelines for satellite landing rights in the country earlier this year.

While some level of progress has been made to overhaul unnecessary and archaic policies, however slowly, further reform is required at the national levels if foreign satellite barriers are ever to be overcome. Alternatively, accepting that landing rights will likely continue to feature, in one form or another, regulators might focus on periodical review into their domestic procedures and costs, including closer harmonization and dialogue among the countries that still enforce them around best practices.

Matthew Evans is the director of Regulatory Affairs at River Advisers. He has over 10 years’ global market access experience in the satellite industry, including several years licensing the world’s first hybrid satellite/ terrestrial, pan-continental aviation connectivity network, and the industry’s largest European licensing initiative of the last two decades.