EU S-Band Licences Awarded to Inmarsat and Solaris

The European Commission has announced it has awarded the rights to provide S-band services in Europe to satellite operators Inmarsat Ventures and Solaris Mobile, which could be used to provide mobile services and high-speed internet access across Europe. U.K.-based Inmarsat and Solaris (a joint venture between Luxembourg's SES Astra and France's Eutelsat) have been awarded the rights for 18 years across 27 European countries, a European Union (EU) executive said in a statement, and it is hoped that services will be up and running within two years.

The S-band, which covers the 2- 4 GHz bandwidth, is currently used by weather, radar and some communications satellites, but has the potential to offer mobile satellite services (MSS) using a mix of ground stations and low-power handsets or portable terminals mounted onto a car or a ship. The European Commission says MSS could offer wireless services to millions of European consumers and businesses, and could bridge the digital divide by bringing mobile services and high-speed internet coverage to underserved regions. EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding welcomed the announcement, saying, "MSS have huge potential: they can enable Europeans to access new communication services, particularly in rural and less-populated regions ... A Europe-wide market for MSS is now becoming a reality."

Outlook and Implications

• S-Band Comes to Europe: Satellite communication services are already available at higher frequencies in Europe, chiefly via 'sat-phone' services, but the equipment required is often cumbersome and expensive, which has held back their wider use except for in geographically isolated regions where they are the only alternative. This is the first time that S-Band spectrum has been awarded on a pan-European basis, rather than country-by-country, thus making these licences potentially highly valuable. However, rather than launching their own wireless operator services, it is believed that the S-Band operators will seek partnerships with existing mobile operators looking to use the spectrum to expand their offerings. The S-band frequency is close to some 3G mobile spectrum, meaning existing 3G infrastructure could easily be reconfigured to work on S-band. The spectrum could allow existing pan-European operators to offer unbroken 3G coverage across the continent. With Vodafone also announcing that it will scrap roaming fees across its markets for the summer—a move that 3 has already ushered in on a permanent basis—the vision of ubiquitous, global mobile services that earlier generations of satellite phones failed to deliver is becoming closer (see World: 16 January 2007: 3 Drops Roaming Charges Across Operations and United Kingdom: 14 May 2009: Vodafone UK Unit to Scrap Roaming Charges for 3 Summer Months).
• Is the Two-Year Launch Window Realistic? The EU says the candidates were chosen according to the technical and commercial quality of their proposals, as well as their potential geographic coverage, consumer benefits and possible public-sector uses, such as emergency services and disaster relief. However, Solaris has admitted that it recently discovered a fault on its satellite, which could prevent new services from running at full capacity. Even so, the operator said it remains committed to the project and already has plans to launch a second satellite, the date for which could be brought forward if the first satellite proves problematic. If the S-Band operators are able to meet their commitments, Europe could see S-Band services up and running within two years, with the potential to dramatically increase mobile and wireless broadband coverage across the continent.
• S-Band in the United States: The rights for European S-Band attracted bids from U.S.-based satellite companies, such as TerreStar and ICO, where the S-Band is already in use chiefly to provide WiMAX services to remote regions. The GlobalStar ' Big LEO' (Low Earth Orbit) network already has agreements with several terrestrial operators, while equipment vendor Qualcomm has a deal with Skyterra's Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV) and ICO to integrate satellite communications capabilities into multimode chipsets for mobile handsets (see United States: 14 April 2008: FCC Increases Spectrum Allocation for Globalstar Terrestrial Componentsand 23 September 2008: Qualcomm to Build Multimode Cellular-Satellite Phone Chips by 2010). As European operators seek to boost dwindling revenues in saturated regions with broadband use, the S-Band has the potential to open up new markets and fresh revenue streams. This could meet demands from rural users, commercial groups and government agencies for wide area coverage with advanced devices akin to standards handsets, with satellite networks to back up the capacity and cost advantages of ground-based systems in more densely populated areas.