Policymakers, Regulators Said Unaware of Satellite’s Role in Broadband Rollout
"Black holes” in knowledge are slowing take-up of satellite technology in developing and developed countries, officials from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO) and the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization said in interviews. Governments and regulators in CTO countries lack information on the relative costs and advantages of satellite communications and, in regions such as Africa, often face environmental, affordability and other challenges, said CTO CEO Ekwow Spio-Garbrah. Many officials have yet to see that satellite is a necessary part of the overall telecom picture, said ITSO Director General Jose Toscano.
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ITSO recently agreed to partner with the CTO to train policymakers on the use of satellite for universal broadband services. Headquartered in Washington, ITSO is a 150-member intergovernmental organization charged with ensuring that Intelsat provides public telecom services globally and without discrimination. The CTO identifies itself as an international development partnership among Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth governments, business and civil society organizations.
Many CTO governments lack regular, updated information about the comparative costs between use of satellite bandwidth, fiber, mobile and other radio/wireless transmissions per MHz or other transmission unit, as well as comparisons of latency, redundancy and other efficiency and cost parameters, said Spio-Garbrah. Even among satellite operators and vendors, there’s “considerable darkness” about relative costs, services, advantages and efficiencies, he said.
Some African countries are involved in the Regional African Satellite Communication project while others, such as Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt, are preparing to launch their own national satellites, Spio-Garbrah said. But they're unclear about why national programs may not be better than relying on the systems of other countries or consortiums such as Intelsat or Inmarsat, he said. With a lot of fiber capacity coming to Africa in the next two years, there must be better understanding about the impact of those extra terabytes of capacity on the whole satellite industry, he said.
Africa brings additional challenges to satellite deployment, said Spio-Garbrah. They include huge deserts and forests, major bodies of water, sometimes widely dispersed populations, absence of electricity or reliable power supplies, and affordability issues, he said. In many cases, satellite and other technology providers just want to sell their equipment without taking any of the risks operators and investors face in marketing the products or services, he said.
Government officials and regulators often lack detailed knowledge about the possibilities that satellite technologies offer for universal broadband access, said Toscano. In many cases, alternative solutions such as submarine cable and fiber backbone networks, and new technologies such as WiMAX, have been presented as more reliable and economical and, therefore, a replacement for satellite, he said.
But satellite proved its worth in the last two years alone, Toscano said. Earthquakes and cuts in submarine cables affected countries and sectors such as financial services, and in both cases, satellite was required to guarantee connectivity. There are also examples of how broadband satellite connectivity has brought new education and health care initiatives -- services which are key to enabling nations to achieve the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 -- to remote areas through a combination of satellite, fiber backbone and wireless access, he said. Satellite must be part of the overall picture, he said.
There are regulatory challenges to satellite rollout in developed as well as developing countries, Toscano said. Government policies must recognize the importance of rules that enable the growth of broadband satellite infrastructure, he said. Broadband must be a major element in all universal access policies, he said. Officials may also need to put mechanisms in place to help finance broadband networks and must “radically rethink” tax and radio spectrum policies, he said. At the international level, there must be cooperative and coordinated interoperability standards that can grow markets for devices, networks and software, he said.
The joint training modules will be based on the particular needs of CTO member countries, the areas of specialist knowledge of the trainers and on what both organizations believe should be the core content, Spio-Garbrah said. Key topics include spectrum management and frequency allocation, he said.