Two of the world’s top three providers
of satellite capacity are locked in battle over rights to 500MHz of
transmission spectrum for the lucrative UK DTH market served by BSkyB
and also Freeview. The dispute, which has been simmering several years,
was brought back to the boil by SES launching a new satellite, Astra 2F,
into orbit in September, and stating that it intends taking over 500MHz
of spectrum currently used by Eutelsat. Its intention is to do this
from October 2013, at 28.2 degrees East, which is a prime slot covering
the UK and Ireland, beaming highly popular channels from the BBC, ITV
and Channel 4. In total, the spectrum under dispute equates to 15
transponders capable of carrying 140 to 180 HD channels.
SES argues that there is no dispute
because it had negotiated the rights to the claimed spectrum back in
2005, and that Eutelsat had been operating over those frequencies only
on a temporary basis. The rights had been owned by Deutsche Telekom
until 2005, with an agreement before then for Eutelsat to use the
spectrum. But in 2005, Deutsche Telekom appeared to hand the rights over
to German satellite services company Media Broadcast, which in turn
signed a deal for those rights with SES. Having launched Astra 2F in the
right position, SES now wants to invoke those rights that it believes
it owns.
Meanwhile, Media Broadcast had been leasing capacity itself from
Eutelsat, but according to some reports, ended that arrangement last
year. For its part, Eutelsat is arguing that its own agreement with
Deutsche Telekom had no time limit, and was still in force. The dispute
therefore appears to hinge on whether SES actually did have full rights
to the spectrum after its deal with Media Broadcast, if Eutelsat had a
pre-existing contract for them dating back to 1999 that had never been
annulled.
Eutelsat has now requested the International Chamber of Commerce
(ICC) in Paris to rule on whether Media Broadcast and Deutsche Telekom
did have the right to snatch away the spectrum from Eutelsat. The ICC is
an international business body that does arbitrate in disputes between
major enterprises, although it is not totally clear whether its decision
is absolutely binding across the world of satellite operations.
SES is the world’s second-largest
telecommunications satellite operator by revenue after Intelsat, both
based in Luxembourg, and operates a fleet of 50 geostationary satellites
able to reach 99 percent of the world’s population. France-based
Eutelsat is the world’s third largest satellite provider, covering the
whole of Europe, as well as the Middle East, Africa, India and
significant parts of Asia and the Americas.
(Source : Broadcast Engineering)
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