With AMC-9 Down, SES Seeking OK of Service Restoration Plan

With AMC-9 no longer responding to commands, SES Americom's plan to restore long-term service to customers involves moves by both its AMC-4 and AMC-6 satellites. In a pair of FCC International Bureau filings (see here and here) Friday, it asked for special temporary authority to relocate AMC-4 satellite to 85 degrees west to take over the traffic carried by AMC-6, letting AMC-6 move to 83 degrees west to restore traffic hit by an anomaly on AMC-9. It said it can't keep AMC-9 in its assigned station-keeping volume and "a significant portion" of its traffic is now being carried by AMC-6, which was recently relocated to 85 degrees west. It said its plan to restore long-term service to customers who had been using AMC-9 is to temporarily stop AMC-4 -- which recently began drifting 134.9 degrees west -- at 84 degrees west on or around June 29 and transfer AMC-6 traffic to AMC-4. The company said once that transfer is done, AMC-6 can be relocated to 83 degrees west, at which point SES will transfer that traffic back to AMC-6 and then resume the AMC-4 drift.