 |
Business Review 1996/1997
|
|
Business Review 1996/1997
|
Space Services
Licensing and Co-ordination
The demand for licences from UK Fixed Satellite Service (FSS) operators to support a range of activities is increasing steadily, although the very high growth rates following deregulation in the early 1990s have not been sustained.
Co-ordination between FSS earth stations and terrestrial fixed links offers increasing challenges as the two services experience significant growth rates. The Agency has been developing a number of software tools to assist in the co-ordination of new earth stations and further improve the efficient processing of licence requests.
The Microwave Fixed Link and Satellite Committee (MFLSC) continues to be the main consultative committee to address the many emerging joint FSS and Fixed Service issues. The former Satellite Consultative Committee (SCC) has been renamed the Satellite Co-ordinating Committee and will continue to act as a forum for an exchange of views on issues of particular relevance to the fixed satellite sector reporting to the MFLSC as appropriate.
With regard to European legislation in the space services area, three EC directives are relevant. The EMC Directive (89/336/EEC) came into force on 1 January 1996 and is currently applicable. The Satellite Earth Station Equipment (SESE) Directive (93/97/EEC) came into force on 1 January 1997, however it cannot yet be implemented due to the lack of Common Technical Regulations (CTRs) and Agency staff are actively progressing this within ETSI. The third directive of relevance is the Licensing Directive (97/13/EC) which is aimed at assisting the ongoing liberalisation of the European telecommunications market and which will come into force on 1 January 1998. Agency staff, along with colleagues from the Department of Trade and Industry CII Division, were actively involved in the development of the Licensing Directive and it is considered that RA's Space Services licensing policy procedures are already broadly consistent with the requirements of the directive.
Work continues within ETSI-SES to maintain previously published European Technical Standards (ETSs) and formulate new standards where necessary. One particular satellite-related area in which Agency staff are currently involved is future Ka-Band Interactive Direct-to-home terminals.
Space Services staff have begun consulting customers in the Fixed Satellite sector as part of a review of the earth station licence products which are currently offered. This review process comes under the wider Agency initiative to harmonise internal licensing processes and procedures (the RULES project) and will enable the Agency to offer satellite earth station operators a range of licence products which will better cater for their evolving applications as well as being more consistent with the principles of efficient spectrum usage. Although the determination of fees for satellite earth station licences will be broadly consistent with the principles of spectrum pricing, there are no immediate plans to extend the use of spectrum pricing as a spectrum management tool to the Space Services sector.
Development of Computer Tools
SECOM - Satellite and Earth Station Co-ordination Management
This new system is being developed partly to replace the old SATCOS satellite co-ordination system, which was recently decommissioned following the successful completion and delivery of the first phase of SECOM. The new system offers many advantages in terms of both functionality and speed. SECOM also incorporates the latest ITU-R technical recommendations and will implement recognised national and international co-ordination procedures.
Work is now progressing on the second phase of SECOM, which will add the earth station co-ordination functionality and will upgrade the entire system to be fully compatible with the latest paper and electronic notification procedures of the ITU Radiocommunications Bureau.
LOTEM - Local Terrain Model
LOTEM is a graphical visualisation tool being developed with the intention of providing an aid to the national co-ordination process between proposed new earth stations and terrestrial fixed links. It will enable an estimate of the shielding offered by clutter and small-scale terrain features to be considered in the co-ordination process using recognised propagation and diffraction models.
The basic LOTEM tool should be completed by the end of 1997. Further enhancements may be developed in the future, depending on experience of its use during co-ordination problems.
FLATCO - Fixed Links and Transportable Earth Station Coordination
The development of the FLATCO software tool has progressed well and the system should be fully operational by the end of 1997. FLATCO has been designed to facilitate the rapid clearance of Satellite News Gathering (SNG) terminals in the heavily used 14.25 to 14.5 GHz band, whilst protecting emerging fixed service networks. The scope of the FLATCO project was increased in early 1997 to encompass the functionality presently included in a separate software package which has been used up until now to carry out rapid clearance of SNG terminals against 'sensitive' sites in the UK (e.g. airports).
|
