It doesn’t necessarily have the drama of, say, a Mike Griffin appearance on Capitol Hill (which says something right there) but to a significant (and lucrative) part of the overall space industry, it is important: international regulators decided late last week to preserve a key spectrum band for satellite services. There was a proposal going into the 2007 World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva last month to allow terrestrial wireless broadband services, like WiMAX, to use a swath of the C-band spectrum reserved for satellite services, something the industry said would create interference that would make satellite use of the spectrum untenable in much of the world. But thanks to a “well-organized lobbying campaign that included support from governments, international organizations, non-profits, and technology companies”, regulators decided to preserve that C-band spectrum for satellite services.
[…] be reserved for the satellite industry and protected it from terrestrial interference (hat tip: Space Politics). The WRC is where member states negotiate rules for usage of the radio frequency spectrum. Going […]
That decision is a relief. We only have one viable commercial customer for our industry (though Earth observation is getting close). If we let terrestrial interests nibble away at that industry’s essential resource, what happens to satellite manufacturing, launch vehicles, et cetera?
— Donald