Russia export controls and sanctions

The cost of launching a satellite hasn’t risen in line with other expenses during the past decade, Arianespace President Clayton Mowry told us. Launches may cost less than they did ten years ago, he said. And “you can launch much more satellite today than you could a decade ago,” Mowry said. Bigger satellites are necessary to deliver bandwidth-intensive products consumers want, he said.

Synchronica will acquire mobile e-mail provider AxisMobile for $4.9 million in new Synchronica shares, it said. The deal expands Synchronica’s market to Eastern Europe and Russia and adds operator partners including T- Mobile, MTS and Megafon. The mobile communications provider will integrate AxisMobile’s mobile e-mail platform and patented AxisMobile Optimizer e-mail transcoding gateway. Synchronica also announced completion of a $10 million funding, bringing its total 2008 funding to $18 million, it said.

Telecoms Sans Frontieres (TSF) deployed in Georgia Wednesday, after that nation and Russia agreed to a truce ending a five-day war. The group was to land Wednesday afternoon in Tbilisi, Georgia, with its first task assessing communications infrastructure damage. “TSF’s crew is carrying satellite communications equipment to install communication centers offering Broadband Internet access, phone and fax lines and all the necessary IT equipment for a crisis management center,” the group said. “Depending on needs identified, TSF could run humanitarian calling operations so that victims of the conflict can give news to their family in the country and abroad and request personalized assistance.”

Entertainment-themed Web sites are the most popular with mobile Internet users in Brazil, Russia, India, China and other emerging markets, Nielsen said. In North America and Europe, weather, news and search are the favorite categories, it said. Mobile Internet users keep multiplying, Nielsen said. The U.S. leads in mobile Web use with 15.6 percent penetration, followed by the U.K., Italy and Russia, it said. Mobile fills “an important access gap” where online access isn’t readily available, it said. The arrival of mobile data services will have “a tremendous positive impact” on emerging markets, Nielsen said.

Four days of attacks on government and online media Web sites have targeted Georgian and international servers in the U.S. and Europe, said Georgia’s largest ISP. Russia could cut off international voice and other traffic if it called a general embargo, an industry source said. A fiber link project expected to connect Georgia directly with Western Europe, skirting Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, is only two months from completion, the ISP said. The Russian Ministry for Information Technologies and Communications didn’t respond immediately to phone call and e-mail queries about the claims.

SatGate will use four transponders on Astra 5A, operated by SES Sirius. Lithuanian SatGate is using the capacity to provide broadband to Eastern and Central Europe, Russia and the Middle East, SES said. Astra 5A orbits at 31.5 degrees east.

Viacom said its Q2 sales rose 21 percent to $3.8 billion. Profit fell 6.2 percent from a year earlier -- when Viacom recorded a one-time gain on the sale of MTV Russia -- to $407 million. Sales at its cable networks rose 11 percent to $2.1 billion.

Telecom acquisitions and mobile expansion will be major trends in Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC), among the world’s largest telecom markets, speakers said Thursday at a BRIC Opportunities forum. For U.S. investors and telecom companies, speakers see uncertainties in policy changes in those countries, but also opportunities. The conference, part of the Emerging Telecom Market Forums series, was sponsored by Information Gatekeepers (IGI) and the Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker law firm.

Mobile operators have hiked prices to roam outside the EU to make up for lost roaming revenue in Europe, Informa Telecoms & Media reported. The European Commission (EC) last year capped roaming rates at $0.76 ( 0.49) a minute for calls within the EU made by subscribers of European mobile operators, Informa said. But European regulators don’t control roaming charges outside their territories, so rates have risen since the “Eurotariff” took effect, the report said. It noted, for example, that the average price of a call to Italy made by a subscriber roaming in Russia was $5.74 a minute before the Eurotariff, but now gone up 25 percent to $7.12. Since the EC cap was imposed, operators report roaming revenue declines in the “hundreds of millions of euros,” and they're looking elsewhere to recoup, report author Angela Stainthorpe said. Only around 15 percent of EU roamers travel outside the EU, but sky-high rates they're paying have changed providers’ roaming strategy, she said. Countries once relatively unimportant to EU operators have gained prominence through their contribution to roaming income, she said. The EC worries about the situation but can’t legislate outside the EU, the report said. But it and national authorities are monitoring circumstances and regulators are looking at ways to remedy it, Informa said.

The FCC probably will agree with Iridium that a change to its mobile satellite service license giving it additional spectrum is effective globally, sources said. The FCC reconfigured the Big LEO band at 1.6 GHz in November (CD Nov 13 p5), giving Iridium additional exclusive spectrum. Globalstar appealed the decision in February. Since then, Iridium has asked the FCC to issue its licenses reflecting the November rebanding and to indicate that this change was effective globally (CD March 27 p8). FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has circulated an order agreeing with Iridium -- but basing the decision on a 1996 ruling instead of Iridium’s argument about interference, sources said. At least two commissioners agree with Martin, they added. In 1996, the commission changed its Regulatory Policies Governing Domestic Fixed Satellites and Separate International Satellite Systems in an order that came to be known as Disco I. “Disco I has nothing to do with the implementation of band plans for satellite services and does not purport to work on any revolution in the authority of each national administration to determine the use of radio frequencies within its borders,” William Lake, Globalstar’s outside counsel, told the agency late last week. If, as expected, the FCC agrees with Iridium, Globalstar said, it will add this issue to its appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The commission’s going along with Iridium would harm Globalstar’s ability to provide service globally, Globalstar believes. For example, service to Russia would be severely limited because Globalstar’s lower channels “are made unavailable for MSS use in order to prevent interference to GLONASS,” Lake said. Iridium wouldn’t benefit from the change, he said, because “Iridium may provide service only where a national authorization authorizes it to do so.”