Canada isn’t in any hurry to award a licence for a multimedia satellite, despite warnings from international regulators that it will take away our orbital slot if it isn’t used by 2005. This ‘use it or lose it’ deadline is posing a challenge to both Industry Canada and the private sector, which fear that the market for Ka-band services is too premature to attract the massive amounts of capital investment needed to build and launch a satellite. Canada appears to be taking a more cautious approach to licensing Ka-band than its neighbours to the south.

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