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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TMI Communications has won a lengthy U.S. battle to secure frequencies for a new mobile satellite that will transform the Ottawa-based company from a telephony to a broadband services provider. The July 17 decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to award 3.5 MHz of contiguous spectrum to eight applicants ends a decade-long feud that pitted mobile satellite services (MSS) companies against terrestrial competitors who fought hard to have the spectrum reassigned for their use.

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Nortel announces record loss for Q2
Once the darling of the Canadian telecom market, Nortel Networks Corp has come crashing down to earth. The company reported the largest quarterly loss in Canadian history – US$19.4 billion in the second quarter of 2001. The Standard & Poor’s Corp has lowered the firm’s credit rating from single-A to tripple-B. More details.

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