WASHINGTON-Mobile Satellite Ventures L.P. is protesting an Application for Review filed by rival Inmarsat Ventures Ltd., claiming Inmarsat’s arguments are nothing new and meant to slow MSV’s entry into the mobile satellite service market.
“The Federal Communications Commission has recognized the opportunity ATC provides MSS to break the vicious cycle of low capacity, high prices and few customers. Only with ATC can MSS achieve the coverage, capacity and economies of scale needed to overcome this vicious cycle with a virtuous one of affordable equipment and service,” said MSV in a Dec. 23 filing. “Every delay Inmarsat is able to generate buys it more time to get a return on its existing investment and to develop the intellectual capacity to operate in the ATC area itself.”
In a public-relations blitz accompanying the filing, MSV asserts it has tried unsuccessfully to work with Inmarsat.
“We are at the final stages of a regulatory process that started in 2000-down to one opponent, Inmarsat. They have filed an Application for Review and we have responded with an objection. At this point, they are the only objector,” said Carson Agnew, MSV president and chief operating officer in a telephone interview with RCR Wireless News. “We have tried to work with them.”
In November the FCC approved MSV’s request that it be allowed to use land-based repeaters to augment its L-Band satellite system. The FCC’s International Bureau deferred some of MSV’s waiver requests until the commissioners decide the fate of MSV’s reconsideration petition, which was filed in July 2003.
“We got some of the key things we need but we continue to ask for some more relief,” Agnew told RCR Wireless News.
MSV’s idea of using land-based repeaters-known as ancillary terrestrial component-came out of the success of satellite radio, said Agnew.
“People think they are getting this great satellite signal but in reality, both networks (used by XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Radio) have land-based repeaters,” said Agnew, noting that satellite signals cannot penetrate buildings and urban canyons. “In the two-way service-mobile satellite service-they had the same problem,” he added.
