FCC
Cancels Seven Ka-band Satellite Licenses
The Federal
Communications Commission has cancelled seven Ka-band satellite
licenses held by three companies. The FCC announced Morning
Star
Satellite Co. LLC, NetSat 28 Co. LLC
and PanAmSat Corp. had not begun construction
of their
satellites by May 1998, as required by their licenses, nor had
they requested extensions of their deadlines.
The orbital
slots for which they held licenses are: Morning Star Satellite Co.
LLC, which held licenses for four satellites at 62°W, 30°E,
107.5°E and 147°W.
NetSat 28 Co. LLC of Annapolis, Md., holding a license for 95°W.
The company also had applied for transfer of control to EMS
Technologies Inc. of Norcross, Ga., but the FCC dismissed this as
moot, since it cancelled the underlying license. PanAmSat Corp. of
Greenwich, Conn., which held licenses for 58°W and 125°W.
Although
Morning Star submitted a copy of a construction contract dated
June 28, 1998, the FCC said, "It did not contain any terms
relating to the contractor's construction schedule, Morning Star's
payment schedule or any other evidence of a bonding commitment for
satellite construction. Even if it had been timely executed, the
contract provided to the [FCC] staff to document Morning Star's
compliance with its license conditions shows no evidence that it
binds the parties, does not contain conditions precedent and does
not commit the contractor to construct the satellites."
 In
the case of NetSat 28, the FCC said the company had not begun
construction or requested an extension of the May 1998 milestone.
The company had submitted a redacted copy of a contract with Space
Systems/Loral dated Dec. 17, 1999, "approximately 18 months
after the mandatory milestone." The statement of Space
System/Loral's executive vice president that it was
"’immediately commencing its performance under the
contract' further demonstrates NetSat 28's failure to satisfy the
May 1998 construction commencement deadline.”
PanAmSat
had milestones of May 1998 and May 1999 to start construction of
its proposed PAS 10 and PAS 11 satellites, respectively. However,
it requested modifications of its licenses to allow the use of inter-satellite
links (ISL) for
communications with seven other Ka-band satellite  authorizations
that it acquired from the Hughes
Electronics Corp. The FCC said that because
it had not assigned frequencies for inter-satellite links,
PanAmSat asked it "to suspend the milestone schedule
in its authorization, pending the assignment of ISL spectrum and
the grant of an amended authorization." The FCC dismissed
PanAmSat's reasoning. The company's "reliance on its pending
license modification and extension applications as a basis for
failing to satisfy the first of its milestones is without merit.
It is well established than an extension of a milestone schedule
is granted only when delay in implementation is due to
circumstances beyond the licensee's control. The filing of a
license modification application does not justify an extension of
a milestone schedule because the decision to seek a modification
of one's license is a business decision wholly within the
discretion and control of the licensee. Otherwise, a licensee
could routinely extend its milestone deadlines by filing repeated
modification requests for its system."
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