Inmarsat Global Ltd. is fighting a request by New ICO Satellite Services G.P. for another deadline extension on its planned launch of a 2 GHz mobile satellite service spacecraft.
“Inmarsat fully supports the development and deployment of innovative new technologies, as demonstrated by the many sophisticated technological advances that are included in Inmarsat’s current fleet of satellites, the Inmarsat-4s,” the company told the Federal Communications Commission. “However, in this circumstance, ICO leveraged the simplicity of its original ‘bent-pipe’ design and its promises of an accelerated construction schedule as a means of convincing the commission to allow ICO to deploy a GSO [geostationary orbit] system on the longer milestone schedule that applied to its NGSO [non-geostationary orbit] system, and to grant ICO half the entire 2 GHz band-only then to fundamentally modify its system design once the commission granted ICO its requested relief. ICO should not be rewarded for its manipulation of the commission’s processes by being granted the regulatory relief it now seeks.”
After ICO changed its network design in 2005 from one with multiple orbiting non-geostationary satellites to a single geostationary satellite, the FCC extended its launch milestone from July 2006 to July 2007.
ICO said the brief extension it seeks is due to unanticipated manufacturing delays in connection with the original satellite design, adding that the public interest would be served by giving it some additional time.
“ICO has completed more than 85 percent of the satellite, has a binding contract and has secured full funding to complete the satellite. ICO’s commitment to completing satellite construction is beyond question,” the firm said.
ICO called Inmarsat’s opposition to its minor deadline extension request “a transparent attempt to impose an unfair and unprecedented burden on an entity in which Inmarsat expects to compete.”
