Regulators OK Airwaves for Satellite Ventures
Paving the way for additional global satellite networks, international regulators have agreed to allocate valuable airwaves needed by the ventures to offer high-speed telephone and Internet service around the world.
Following intense lobbying by the United States, France and several other European countries, members of the World Radio Conference voted Friday in Geneva to allow SkyBridge, the satellite project of Alcatel Alshom Group of France, and Teledesic Corp., a Kirkland, Wash.-based company owned in part by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and cellular phone magnate Craig McCaw, to share airwaves with other wireless services.
The landmark vote by the 2,000 delegates from 142 countries represents a huge boost for SkyBridge, which has a satellite license application pending before the Federal Communications Commission. And it is the final green light for Teledesic, which has waged a high-profile and controversial campaign to win regulatory approval for its ambitious $9-billion satellite project.
“Combined with our FCC license, this gives us all we need to move forward aggressively to build our system,” said Teledesic President W. Russell Daggatt. “The international spectrum allocation adopted at this year’s conference concludes the effort we began at the World Radio Conference in 1995.”
The decision, in effect, gives the two companies control over more than twice the airwaves currently used by the nation’s 1,561 television and 12,199 radio stations combined--a reach some engineers say would cause electronic interference with other telecommunications services.
Teledesic plans to build a $10-billion network of 288 low-earth-orbiting satellites that would provide businesses and individual computer users around the world with high-speed wireless connections to the Internet. The system would compete with Alcatel’s 64-satellite network, as well as Motorola Corp.’s satellite venture called Celestri.
Rival satellite services were quick to criticize the vote, saying it could interfere with fixed geostationary satellites--especially those beaming video programming and other communications services into the homes and businesses of millions of subscribers.
“The geostationary guys are furious at the government for letting this happen,” said Jeff Olsen, a Washington communications lawyer who represents SkyBridge.
But a conference spokeswoman described the airwave allocation as a compromise that would benefit global communications competition.
“The conference emphasized very clearly that the [airwave] bands have to be on a shared basis with no monopoly,” spokeswoman Francine Lambert told reporters Friday. “Whatever systems are using the bands have to work it out.”
The Teledesic and SkyBridge projects are two of nearly a dozen satellite ventures scheduled to be launched in the next decade.
Critics say the ventures, which would blanket the skies with more than 1,000 satellites, would leave the industry with more airwaves than it can profitably market.
But for consumers, the stampede of satellite projects is producing furious price competition in wireless services. Already, prices for several wireless telephone services have plunged to as low as 7 cents a minute or less in such markets as Pittsburgh and San Francisco.
