Russia export controls and sanctions

Russia is to launch a communications satellite Jan. 28, said Roscosmos, the federal space agency. The satellite carries Ku-, C- and L-band transponders. It was originally scheduled for lift-off in September but was delayed after Thales Alenia Space was late in delivering part of the satellite to Russia, according to the Russian News & Information Agency. The satellite now has completed testing and is scheduled to be moved to Baikonur Thursday.

Governments protect citizens’ privacy less and monitor their activities more, the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and U.K.-based Privacy International said. New International Privacy rankings reflect rising surveillance and falling privacy safeguards, likely a result of concern over immigration and border control, the groups said.

Russia launched three navigational satellites on Tuesday, said state news agency Pravda. The launch brings the GLONASS Global Navigation Satellite System fleet to 18. The constellation, which covers Russia, needs six more satellites to cover the globe, Pravda said. The original GLONASS constellation was completed in 1995 but “the system rapidly fell into disrepair,” Pravda said.

World Trade Organization countries and would-be WTO members must have transparent and nondiscriminatory satellite licensing or authorization procedures, the Satellite Industry Association told the U.S. Trade Representative in comments filed late Thursday. “Countries should be encouraged to act on satellite access applications within a reasonable period of time, not to exceed six months,” it said. The FCC doesn’t always meet this benchmark but it’s a good goal, an industry source told us. Satellite regulation is veiled in Russia, China, Egypt, Malaysia, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam, SIA said. Countries shouldn’t require a local presence, SIA said. “If all WTO member countries imposed such a requirement, satellite operators would be burdened with maintaining corporate entities in all countries of their coverage -- an unsustainable corporate structure and expense,” it said. Many nations with their own satellites have laws or rules favoring use of them. For example, Kazakhstan has signaled it wants to move some services to KazSat 1. Some countries require mobile satellite service operators to build and maintain domestic gateways. This requirement wears the cloak of security but has nothing to do with running a network, an industry source said. MSS operators “should be able to demonstrate compliance via the most advanced technical means available, without regard to particular technologies or configurations,” SIA said. Some countries require satellite operators to complete international coordination, SIA said. “The FCC does not require an applicant to complete international coordination before granting that applicant’s satellite system authorization to provide service in the U.S. Rather authorizations are conditioned with the requirement to undertake ITU coordination,” it said. India bans use of the Ku-band for “no logical reason,” SIA said. India also requires satellite operators to coordinate capacity use, and the Indian Space Research Organization only allows use of foreign capacity if capacity isn’t available on its system, SIA said.

Inmarsat and Mobile Satellite Ventures have reached a satellite coordination and cooperation agreement for the L- band, the companies said Friday. The agreement ends the long-running dispute enmeshing Inmarsat, MSV and MSV Canada, said industry sources. It “lays the groundwork for increased operational and technical cooperation,” said Inmarsat CEO Andrew Sukawaty.

The U.S. leads the world in audiovisual content sales, produced the most TV revenue in 2006, and is the largest market for radio, the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom) said Wednesday. The body’s second report on international communications markets covers availability and adoption of communications services and their use in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Canada and Japan. The report for the first time includes Brazil, Russia and India, and, where data were available, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland. Key convergent points include: (1) Revenue from U.S. audiovisual content sales amounted to one pound sterling per capita last year, 2.5 times higher than U.K. content sales, the next largest market. (2) The U.K. has the top share of Internet advertising. (3) User-generated content is spreading, with professional producers seeming to provide the most-watched content. At the start of November, YouTube’s three most viewed channels were contributed by professional American TV and music producers. (4) France leads the market in Internet Protocol TV uptake. (5) Young and old users are more numerous among Internet users in mature markets than others. In the U.S., 9 percent of users are over 65 and 20 percent are under 17. The U.S. was the only market studied where more women than men use the Internet. In the TV market: (1) U.S. advertiser and subscriber revenue and public funding was the highest among countries studied, followed by those in Japan and the U.K. (2) Spanish and Italian TV revenue has grown the fastest the past five years, apart from Brazil, Russia and India. (3) The U.S. produced the most TV revenue per resident last year, followed by the U.K. and Japan. (4) Analog TV is switched off in the Netherlands, Sweden, parts of Germany and Sardinia, and Whitehaven in the U.K. (6) Last year U.S. and Japanese viewers watched more TV than Europeans did. In radio, the U.S. is by far the largest market, with annual revenue approaching 12 billion pounds last year. Average weekly radio listenership was slightly higher in the U.K. than elsewhere, Ofcom said. Broadband’s rising popularity has spurred Internet-based radio listening, the report said. In the seven nations surveyed, a third of residents listen to radio on the Net. In the telecom arena, Ofcom noted that: (1) During 2001-2006 service revenue grew 20 percent across the 12 countries surveyed, driven mostly by mobile. (2) Broadband is the fastest growing sector, comprising 9 percent of total 2006 telecom revenue across the 12 nations. (3) Other than the U.S., which has regional operators, the U.K. has the most diversified mobile and broadband markets among the nations analyzed, and the second most diverse fixed-line market after Germany. (4) During 2001-2006 total broadband connections across the 12 nations rose 600 percent, due mainly to growth in DSL, the most popular high-speed technology in all countries surveyed except the U.S. (5) Mobile networks capable of delivering high-speed data services are beginning to take off, and the number of 3G connections more than doubled in the countries surveyed.

GENEVA -- New proposals on identification of UHF and C- band frequencies for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) were floated Wednesday, as officials seek consensus on harmonized frequencies before a Thursday deadline. Talks over both bands in Europe, Africa and Asia are in flux and serious obstacles remain, a WRC participant from industry said. Fifty-seven European, Asian, African and Arab countries are on tentative lists of countries that may use 3,400 to 3,600 MHz for IMT, according to a draft document. The list is incomplete, according to the document.

Broadband over powerline is making inroads in the growing Internet Protocol TV market in Europe as telcos rely on the technology for distribution within the home, said Chano Gomez, vice president of technology for Spanish chipmaker Design of Systems on Silicon (DS2). European telcos using DS2 technology for in-home distribution of IPTV include BT, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Portugal Telecom and Belgacom, he told us. IPTV is turning out to be the fastest growing business by revenue for BPL in Europe, he said. Telcos are using DSL or fiber as the access technology and then relying on power line inside homes, he said. BPL hasn’t been fine-tuned as an access technology for IPTV, he said, but has advantages in areas where there isn’t much access infrastructure or there’s just one provider. In the U.S., DS2 has focused mainly on the retail market, working with companies like Netgear and D-Link. That’s because many U.S. companies are still using plain Ethernet cable for home networking, Gomez said. “They are spending a huge amount of money on doing that.” But U.S. companies are expected to begin migrating to power line technologies “in the coming months,” he added. Markets for access BPL include India, Russia, China -- and rural areas in the U.S., where the government is providing grants and low-interest loans to encourage deployments, he said.

Seeking to expand network coverage into Russia, BT signed an agreement with Russian telco Golden Telecom giving the companies access to each other’s backbone networks, BT said Thursday. The contract is part of a BT Russian strategy that emphasizes more cooperation with local operators, BT said. BT has more than 250 corporate customers in the region.

Broadband growth is booming in several less-developed markets, Ovum said. A report on Asia-Pacific, western and eastern European, Middle East and African deployment said factors driving uptake include infrastructure competition, pricing and regulation. In some countries ISPs cut service prices relative to average disposable income to draw sales, analyst Jonathan Coham said. Wholesale pricing and local loop unbundling regulations, fixed-line and PC penetration, and demand for content are also speeding uptake, Coham said. But many countries still have barriers to continued growth, he said. The top ten includes Greece, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Ukraine, Ireland, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia and Turkey.