The 27th meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC) of the European Telecommunications Satellite Organisation (EUTELSAT IGO) was held last 14-15 March in Paris, chaired by Spain (Laura Pérez Martos). The gathering was attended by all the other States in the AC, i.e. France, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland. Italy was also represented at the meeting as an observer and at the same time as chair of the Assembly of Parties (Franco Malerba).
The Executive Secretary (ES) of EUTELSAT IGO, Christian Roisse (France), informed the Parties about activities undertaken since the last AC meeting in November up to the present, and especially about supervision of the Eutelsat S.A. company. During the aforementioned period the ES participated as censeur in two meetings of the Eutelsat Communications management and also in two meetings of the Eutelsat S.A. management. The ES informed the Committee that a meeting of the Joint Commission of the IGO and the company had been scheduled and would soon be held.
This Committee's main agenda point concerned the resurgence since December last year of interference affecting radio and television broadcasts by the operator Eutelsat S.A. in Iranian territory. This time the company considers the interference more serious and far-reaching, given that Iran has begun operating the ZOHREH-2 satellite (in the orbital position 26°E), which interferes intensely with the Eurobird™ 2 satellite (orbital position 25.5°E) of Eutelsat S.A. The situation has become especially complex since a recent decision by the Radio Regulation Board (RRB) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) countered an earlier July 2010 decision by the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau (BR), which had decided to cancel all registers concerning that same position, because, and in accordance with rules for the Master International Frequency Register (MIFR), same had not been used for a period of more than two years. Eutelsat S.A. accuses Iran of having supplied the ITU with false information that led that body to make an incorrect decision against what the company considers to be its priority rights to the frequencies in question. The issue will be discussed again at the late March meeting of the RRB; the IGO has urged the Parties to sign a letter supporting the company’s claim. Portugal has backed that intention.
According to the ES, Eutelsat S.A. maintains excellent performance from the operational and financial standpoints, showing conditions to ensure fulfilment of the Basic Principles whose monitoring is the IGO’s responsibility. On 26 December 2010 the company launched the KA-SAT satellite, with the record capacity of 70 Gbps, which will cover Europe and the Mediterranean. The French company Thales Alenia Space was chosen to build the W3D satellite, instead of the W3B satellite, which exploded during launch in October. At the end of last year, the company disseminated 3,782 TV channels (an increase of 334 channels), of which 195 were high definition television (HDTV), mainly in central and eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, the Middle East and central Asia. The group’s fleet currently comprises 26 satellites.
In the second half of 2010, Eutelsat S. A. saw its revenues (70 percent of them originating in video applications) grow on the order of 13 percent, reaching 575.9 million euros, while the EBIDTA margin (80.4 percent) was the best of all the fixed satellite service operators. The group’s net profits were also up by more than 25 percent, reaching 174 million euros. The company’s director for institutional and international affairs, Yves Blanc, corroborated the group’s good financial health and reported that the debt would soon be refinanced; he also responded to questions from the Parties.
The Committee noted the ES’s proposed budget for the years 2011-2013, to present at the next Assembly of Parties scheduled for May.
The ES also reported that he intended to present to the Assembly a proposed procedure for designation of the position of Executive Secretary. Although suggested, it was noted that there would be no place for prior AC comments regarding that proposal.
The ES should also present to the Assembly of Parties a proposed memorandum of understanding (MoU) between EUTELSAT IGO and the ITU to support capacity-building actions, as in the agreement signed by the Union and the International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation (ITSO). The ES reported that it had the company’s principled agreement on the matter; the organisation’s budget for this activity should be no more than 10,000 euros per year. The Parties are encouraged to submit proposals or to support the initiative, for example by sending trainers.
The EUTELSAT IGO will next meet in the last quarter of 2011, after the gathering of the Assembly of Parties.
