WCA May 2012

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28 Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2012
Telecomnews
The World
Radiocommunication
Conference-2012 comes to
a surprise decision on Iran
Writing from Paris in Space News
(24th February), Peter B de Selding
reported that international radio
frequency and orbital slot regulators
had agreed to allow Iran access to an
orbital slot for its planned Zohreh-1
telecommunications satellite: this
despite the fact that Iran missed
repeated deadlines for putting the
satellite into use.
The decision was taken by the World
Radiocommunication Conference
(WRC), the radio frequency conclave
held 23rd January – 17th February in
Geneva, Switzerland.
But the same WRC delegates who
allowed Iran to return to the orbital slot
also applauded an earlier decision by
the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) that denied Iran access to
the slot – at 34 degrees east longitude
– because of the missed deadlines.
Mr de Selding noted that the WRC
decision to readmit Zohreh-1 into the
registry of permitted satellite systems,
which several delegates were at a
loss to explain, will “almost certainly
complicate the life” of Eutelsat — the
Paris-based satellite fleet operator
which has spacecraft too close to the
planned Zohreh-1 network to operate
without interference.
He wrote: “The two sides will need to
engage in extensive negotiations that
may undermine the business plan of
one or the other, or both, depending
on when Zohreh-1 is launched.”
According to Space News, Eutelsat is
already struggling with Iran’s Zohreh-2
satellite network at 26 degrees east,
which is using a satellite owned by
Arabsat of Saudi Arabia.
Unless Iran or Saudi Arabia backs off
its current position, Eutelsat will have
problems deploying a satellite it is
building with the government of Qatar.
Eutelsat and Qatar had thought the
orbital slot was rightfully theirs under
ITU rules.
One industry official was reported
as saying that Eutelsat and Iran had
likely reached at least a tentative
compromise on sharing frequency
rights around 34 degrees east.
This official said it was unclear
whether the Zohreh-1 compromise
might unblock the Zohreh-2 issue,
which the ITU has been struggling to
resolve for more than a year.
✆ This edition of the quadrennial
WRC featured weeks of spora-
dically intense discussions of
frequencies and orbital slots by
3,000 delegates from 153 nations,
and concluded by setting stronger
rules about registering satellite
systems. WRC=12 also agreed
to revive, at its next conference,
the issue of whether International
Mobile Telecommunications
(IMT) should be given access
to spectrum now reserved for
satellite networks.
Mr de Selding wrote: “[This] is an
issue that satellite operators had
hoped was definitively settled
at the last WRC meeting, when
IMT proponents failed to win
support for the broad use of
C-band frequencies for satellite
telecommunications.”
Cubans, a voluble people, are
seeing a welcome drop in the
cost of conversing by mobile
phone “In a country where the
average state salary languishes at
around $20 a month, and daytime
mobile charges are 45 cents a
minute (paid by both the caller
and the receiver), customers have
a strong incentive to keep their
conversations brief. Cubans have
resorted to seeing their phones as
mere fashion accessories.”
The article in the Economist
online (“Talk is Cheap,” 24th Jan-
uary) looked forward as well as
backwards.
As of 1st February, Cubans who
prefer to use their cellphones for
the intended purpose could better
afford to do so.
Writing from the FTTH Conference 2012, held 14th-16th February in Munich,
Ray Le Maistre of Light Reading reported the view of the “somewhat
concerned” industry body FTTH Council Europe that many of the major
Western European economies barely register as fibre access-enabled.
(“Western Europe Still in FTTH Slow Lane,” 15th February).
According to figures released by the council, at the end of 2011 there
were only 4.5 million FTTH (including fibre-to-the-building but not fibre-to-
the-cabinet) subscribers in the European Union, even though 25.8 million
EU homes have been passed with fibre. From statistics gathered by the
research house Idate for the council, this gives the 27 EU nations a take-up
rate of just 17.5 per cent.
(Note: “Homes passed” is a somewhat ambiguous term that may not denote
readily available fibre service.) There were 54.3 million FTTH/B (home/
business) subscribers in Asia/Pacific and 9.7 million in North America.
Mr Le Maistre, who is Light Reading’s international managing editor, believes
these results to be of great concern for western Europe. Not only do many
studies show a positive correlation between true high-speed broadband
and GDP growth. He wrote: “But emerging communications applications
such as cloud services will struggle to truly take hold without a more robust
fixed-access network that cloud services users can trust to deliver the
required bandwidth.”
Major European markets – Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom among
them – do not yet have even a one per cent FTTH penetration rate, and
thus lag more fibre-advanced nations such as Lithuania (about 28 per cent),
Norway (nearly 15 per cent), and Bulgaria (about 10 per cent penetration).
Russia (which is not a member of the European Union) has 4.5 million
subscribers and, with about 12 million homes passed, a take-up rate of
about 38 per cent.
Low take-up rate of fibre-to-the-home within the
European Union is seen as hampering growth in
gross domestic product