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.