Mobile Satellite Executives Happy With Broadband Plan, Disagree on Viability of ATC

The FCC National Broadband Plan recognizes the value of mobile satellite services (MSS) but calls out the ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) license holders for failing to deploy a functional service, said Iridium CEO Matt Desch Wednesday on a panel at the Satellite 2010 conference. Significant investment has been made in ATC, but nobody has made money from the terrestrial side, he said. Globalstar Chairman Jay Monroe disagreed, citing revenue that its ATC license brings in through an agreement with a wireless broadband provider, Open Range. Desch said he’s glad some companies will be able to recoup some of their investments in ATC while raising the value of Iridium’s spectrum: “This is about repurposing spectrum.” Monroe said the commission is right to try to make spectrum use as efficient as possible.

Inmarsat CEO Andy Sukawaty called the broadband plan “great public policy.” By most accounts an impending spectrum shortage from growing demand for wireless data needs to be dealt with, and MSS spectrum is “low and attractive,” he said. A high priority is for the FCC to make sure that current customers and their services are taken care of. Sukawaty said the commission did well in differentiating between the L-band -- used by Inmarsat and SkyTerra and with about 272,000 subscribers total, according to the broadband plan -- and the S-band, used by TerreStar and ICO but without subscribers.

The ATC license has always been a valuable asset of TerreStar, and the FCC’s recommendation on S-band “makes a lot of sense” because it allows TerreStar or another company to use the spectrum as intended, said CEO Jeff Epstein. Easing restrictions helps “us and our shareholders” and a follow-up rulemaking will be “interesting,” he said. Epstein said he still believes TerreStar has a promising business model and that eventually having a product that can switch between satellite and terrestrial networks will save lives.

The FCC plan recommends that a primary terrestrial mobile allocation be added to the to the S-band, “which will provide the option of flexibility to licensees to provide stand-alone terrestrial services using the spectrum,” the commission said. “Use of the terrestrial allocation should be “conditioned on construction benchmarks, participation in an incentive auction, or other conditions designed to ensure timely utilization of the spectrum for broadband and appropriate consideration for the step-up in the value of the affected spectrum.” Industry executives said companies like Iridium and Inmarsat whose airwaves are used mainly by public agencies are largely safe from changes in spectrum rules.