11th meeting Advisory Committee - London

The 11th meeting of the International Mobile Satellite Organisation (IMSO) Advisory Committee (AC) was held on 24-25 May in London.

The meeting’s main goal was to continue preparing a draft Public Service Agreement (PSA) Model to be signed by IMSO and future providers of satellite services under the global maritime distress and safety system (GMDSS), authorised to that end by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), continuing the work accomplished at the Committee’s last meeting (see respective summary).

The secretariat continued work on the document in question between the two AC meetings, collaborating with potential new providers. For this reason the version presented at this meeting had a number of differences vis-à-vis the one from the last meeting. The editing of the draft PSA model is now generically well consolidated, although there are still a number of major issues to define and/ or explain, which drew attention.

Note particularly the issue of future IMSO financing. It is currently financed exclusively by Inmarsat as the only GMDSS provider. In the future such financing is expected to be provided in a shared fashion by all the providers under IMSO supervision. This principle is unanimously accepted, though still to be defined are, specifically, the way such costs will be spread among the various providers and a process of developing and approving the organisation’s budget so as to enable participation and control by the providers as financers.
Some issues regarding financing also concern the fact that the secretariat aims for IMSO to eventually perform other tasks besides supervising the GMDSS service providers. In that case, a model will still have to be defined for allocated the organisation’s costs proportionately among the various activities, to assure no cross-subsidising between them.

Also regarding the PSA model and the IMSO supervisory duties in general, a number of countries raised doubts and reservations about an eventual IMSO function involving initial assessment of potential providers. Such might be seen as a way to control access to the market, a matter normally the domain of the competition and sector-related regulators. This aspect is directly related to the mechanisms being developed in the IMO for the opening to new providers, and to the IMSO responsibilities stemming therefrom.
Elaboration of the draft PSA model was thus not completed at this meeting. The debate on same, particularly regarding the said open points between the secretariat and the potential providers, should continue until the next meeting, so as to there finish editing same for submission to the extraordinary Assembly planned for November of this year.

Another issue that generated a good deal of controversy was the secretariat’s aforementioned intention to extend the IMSO’s responsibilities to other activities. What is currently at stake is the eventual performance of supervisory functions on a future system for the long-range identification and localisation of ships, by delegation from the IMO, as with GMDSS. As this is also a process still being developed in the IMO, in the AC the members expressed some reservations about IMSO involvement in such activity. The secretariat must therefore provide the member States with more information on this issue, to enable a future Assembly decision on this matter.

Lastly, a number of issues of an administrative nature were considered.

Portugal (represented by ANACOM) participated in the meeting by audio-conference. Note that Portugal is only an observer on this Committee.

The next meeting has been scheduled for the end of September.