WCA May 2012

Telecom news

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,” 24 th Jan- uary) looked forward as well as backwards. As of 1 st 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 14 th -16 th 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,” 15 th 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

The World Radiocommunication

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.

Conference-2012 comes to a surprise decision on Iran Writing from Paris in Space News (24 th 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 23 rd January – 17 th February in Geneva, Switzerland. But the same WRC delegates who allowed Iran to return to the orbital slot also applauded an earlier decision by

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Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2012