Intelsat to Sell and Lease Space on Its System

The Intelsat board of governors has decided to sell space on its international satellite system and to rent it under fully protected, long-term leases, an official said Thursday.

During a six-day meeting that ended Wednesday, the board also approved the offering of regular part-time international video service starting Oct. 1, said Jose Alegrett, deputy director general for business planning and external relations at the 110-nation global communications cooperative.

Alegrett, of Venezuela, said the sale and lease of satellite channels, called transponders, “will allow Intelsat to continue to provide services to domestic users that are now in place and plan future capacity.”

He said a price system and contract conditions will be reviewed at the board’s December meeting, but the board will now start negotiating with users.

On another matter, the board noted a memorandum of understanding entered into Aug. 27 between Intelsat and the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to “regularize in a more formal way” Soviet use of Intelsat, Alegrett said.

Among other actions at its six-day meeting, the board:

- Endorsed U.S. reception of programming from the Soviet Union’s Ghorizont 7 satellite.

- Endorsed the requests of Iraq, Nicaragua and Algeria to use the Soviet Union’s Intersputnik satellite system through 1990 in coordination with Intelsat.

- Approved expansion of user options to integrate data and voice services with international video leases.

- Endorsed intersystem coordination of French, Indian, Saudi Arabian and Swedish domestic networks; four U.S. domestic networks for U.S.-Canadian communications; three U.S. networks for transmissions to Latin America and the Caribbean, and 23 U.S. networks and two Mexican networks for U.S.-Mexican communications.

- Endorsed the establishment of formal relations with the Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics and the European Telecommunications Satellite Organization, ensuring information exchanges and cooperative tests, demonstrations and technical consultations.