by Gerald E. Oberst Jr.

The ITU has once again been asked to square the circle and plan orbital slots and frequencies for broadcasting satellite services (BSS). The rising acrimony over certain issues earmarks this topic as a major area of controversy for the world radio conference scheduled for May 2000 in Turkey (WRC-2000).

Via Satellite described the existing BSS plan in September 1994, in an article entitled “To Plan or Not to Plan: A Look at the FSS and BSS Frequency Bands.” The 1977 world radiocommunication conference (WARC-77) adopted a plan for BSS downlinks for Regions 1 and 3, which included all of Europe, Africa and Asia, but not the Americas in Region 2. (A Region 2 plan was adopted in 1983.) The WARC-77 plan reserved 800 MHz of Ku-band spectrum in Region 1 and 500 MHz in Region 3 for BSS downlinks, with the aim of setting aside about five channels per ITU member country, based on widely spaced, high powered BSS satellites.

The plan essentially did not work. As of 1994, Via Satellite’s author Jorn Christensen concluded that the plan was premature, systems seeking to use it for the most part were not commercially viable and the plan “legitimized paper satellites” by treating specific portions of the orbital arc as “commodities to be sold.” The plan was widely viewed as inflexible and outdated. It was accepted wisdom that the five channel allotments in the 1977 BSS plan were not commercially viable, since a business could not be built on that small number of channels on a satellite aimed at a single country.

So what has changed? The answer is that digital satellites can offer many more compressed video channels. The proposal calls for setting aside at least the equivalent of 10 BSS analog channels for each Region 2 country, 12 in Asia Pacific Region 3 countries. Each of those 10 or 12 channels can represent multiple video programs.

What has not changed, however, are the political imperatives. Again, as in 1977, it is the developing countries that want the ITU to set aside frequencies so that the traditional space-using developed countries will not use up all available orbital resources. This time, led by the Arab League countries, they complain that the developed world will “monopolize” the spectrum and prevent the implementation of national satellite systems the developing world may seek in the future.

This political initiative has been brewing for some time. ITU radio conferences in 1995 and 1997 adopted resolutions calling for studies into the feasibility of revising the BSS plans. The political heat was high enough that the ITU Council in 1998 subsequently beefed up the wording that the WRC-97 had already adopted for the WRC-2000 agenda conference (a move that some questioned) in an effort to push the work along. WRC-97 created an Inter-conference Representative Group (IRG) to work on these questions and report to the WRC-2000.

The IRG report was issued in December 1999. It clearly reflects the controversial situation and lack of consensus. The controversy is shown starkly in Annex 1 to the report, sponsored by Arab States such as Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Syria, along with other countries such as China, Iran and Vietnam. They call for WRC-2000 to consider itself the conference entitled to adopt a new plan. They want the IRG to continue with the task of studying any remaining unresolved cases and report to the next WRC. They think that merely reviewing IRG recommendations and deciding on a new plan at the next WRC will take too long. The new plan should only account for those BSS systems that have satisfied the ITU due diligence standards, whose operators have confirmed they are in use and in conformance with the current plan.

Europe disagrees. Seventeen European countries, including all space-faring countries (except, curiously, France and Italy), argue that many of the items proposed in that Annex are beyond the mandate of the IRG. They say that the IRG has not yet demonstrated the feasibility of replanning, that there are major unresolved questions about which “existing” systems must be taken into account, and that many technical incompatibilities and issues have not been resolved.

The rhetoric at times must have been harsh at IRG meetings. The report says some of the developing country delegations argue that the Europeans want to protect their sub- regional systems based on “false reasons” in order to acquire a “monopolization of the spectrum/orbit in contravention with the basic principles of the ITU Constitution.”

The year 1977 was the first time that a space service was planned. The results from the 1977 ITU conference led six years later to a BSS plan for the Americas. Later, it led to extraordinarily contentious planning sessions for fixed satellite services in 1985 and 1988. No doubt the WRC-2000 and its debate over BSS replanning is only the first chapter in new debates on spectrum use in the future.

Gerry Oberst is a partner in the Brussels office of the Hogan & Hartson law firm. His email address is [email protected].