Asia-Pacific nations set up satellite telecoms group
Asia-Pacific nations set up satellite telecoms group
SINGAPORE (AFP): Asia-Pacific countries have decided to work together on regulatory issues related to satellite-based telecommunication ahead of a global meeting in October, officials said yesterday.
A meeting of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) which ended here Wednesday also decided to set up a working group to study the impact of satellite-based systems on the region, an APT statement said.
The group will bring together officials from governments in the region, telecom service providers and operators of Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite (GMPCS).
The systems would offer basic and cellular phone services as well as roaming facilities to capitalize on the soaring demand for telecom services in a region which has just 92 million phone lines for 2.7 billion people.
They would enable a person to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world using a handheld mobile satellite terminal.
Some 120 officials from around the region attended the two-day meeting of the APT, welcoming GMPCS as a "viable way to meet their telecommunication needs" and pledging to work together on policy and regulatory issues, APT said.
Delegates recognized its potential to serve countries which lack basic telecom facilities. GMPCS will offer quick and reliable communications in emergency relief operations and greater mobility for the business traveler.
"However, the benefits of GMPCS cannot be fully realized without a conducive regulatory environment," said the APT statement, calling for a harmonization of policies while respecting the sovereign right of each country.
The meeting came ahead of a conference scheduled by the International Telecommunication Union in October in Geneva to discuss policy and regulatory issues raised by satellite-based telecom systems.
Challenges
An American expert, meanwhile, warned that operators of such systems face major technological, financial and regulatory challenges in their quest to exploit Asia's vast telecom demands.
"The technology is unproved, the financial risks are staggering, the markets are price-sensitive, the regulatory environments are varied and the competition is fierce," Jonathan Dower, vice-president of Pyramid Research Inc., said.
Global telecom players such as Motorola, Alcatel, Hughes, Loral, Inmarsat, Singapore Telecom and Korean Telecom and dozens of others have joined the race to provide what Dower called "instant infrastructure" for telecom services.
They are committed to investing US$5 billion and plan on spending $35 billion more to launch competing space-based telecom networks such as Asia Cellular Satellite System and Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecom.
Dower said in a paper presented to a telecom conference here that mobile satellite service operators were faced with a "dramatic intersection of technology, market and political roadblocks."
They must receive the green light from dozens of regulatory bodies to deliver services on a regional scale, he said, noting that telecom service environments ranged from highly-restricted monopolies of China and Vietnam to the fully liberalized climate of the Philippines.
In technology, they faced challenges of managing global orbiting networks and potential problems of voice quality, call management and network capacity, he said.