Providers support first-come first-serve satellite licensing

Industry Canada should implement a “first-come first-served” process to award fixed-satellite service and broadcasting-satellite service spectrum licences, Xplornet Communications Inc., Telesat Canada and Shaw Communications Inc. said in documents filed with the department this week. “Xplornet believes that this is the simplest and most administratively efficient means of assigning licences and it responds best to industry demand,” the company said in response to the department’s March call for comments on a proposed licensing framework for satellite spectrum. In the March notice of consultation, Industry Canada said it was proposing a first-come first-serve licensing framework because it is timelier, more easily administrated and more objective than auctions and other comparative licensing frameworks processes. At the time, the department said it recognized that “access to orbital positions is time-limited” and said it would aim to “maximize the time that operators have between licence approval and the deadline to bring the positions into use.” In comments posted on the department’s website Thursday, Xplornet said it supported the proposed framework, but urged the department not to resort to “spectrum splitting” in cases where two companies apply for licences to use the same spectrum at the same time. In those cases, Xplornet said, “the applicants should be given the opportunity to negotiate an outcome prior to the Department imposing the default position of the spectrum splitting on them,” adding that spectrum splitting often results in neither company having a viable business plan. Shaw said in its May 23 comments that it also supports the proposed framework, but urged the department to include safeguards against “frivolous or vexatious applications” that would seek to undermine a satellite distributor’s access to spectrum.. Telesat also supported the proposed first-come first-served framework, calling it “the best mechanism to award satellite licences.”

Providers support first-come first-serve satellite licensing

Brief | June 1, 2012

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