By Hector Calabia
IDG News Service,
Buenos Aires Bureau
BUENOS AIRES
The Argentine
Secretary for Communications, Henoch Aguiar, and the Canadian Ambassador in Argentina,
Jean-Paul Hubert, signed a reciprocity agreement for the "provision of
facilities and commercial satellite services". The papers were signed on
Tuesday.
By this
agreement Argentina and Canada can now exchange permissions and frequencies for
satellite transmissions, both uplink and downlink, from both nations.
The deal was
accorded "somewhat hurriedly" as the Canadian Ambassador confessed,
just a month before the launching of the new Canadian communications satellite
Anik F1. This satellite will provide
communications coverage of all the Americas, and has vacant capacity for
South-North (South America to North America) and South-South (within Southern
America) channels.
The satellite is being manufactured by Hughes Space &
Communications International for the
Canadian satellite operator Telesat, a wholly owned subsidiary of BCE Inc.
(Bell Canada) one of the world's leading telecommunications companies.
The spacecraft
will be equipped with 48 Ku-band transponders, with a bandwidth of 27 MHz equivalent
to about 4 normal TV channels, and 36 in C-band, equivalent to about 6 TV
channels. This capacity allows the transmission of thousands of simultaneous
Internet or voice channels, says Dr. Liliana Díaz-Olavarrieta, Telesat's
Regional Manager for South America.
The satellite
will serve the Canadian, US and Latin American markets. In Brazil, Telesat has
invested more than US$100 million for serving the Brazilian market with this
satellite. In Argentina, Telesat is looking for local customers that may be
interested in purchasing their spare channel capacity.
Asked about
the alleged current supremacy of optical fiber over satellite links,
Díaz-Olavarrieta said that they are complementary. Many optical fiber operators
are interested in purchasing satellite capacity as back-up for their
operations. "Fiber can be cut, or interrupted. Satellite operations can be
disrupted by the weather or other mishaps: they need each other", she
said.
Telesat
lauched the world's first geostationary domestic communications satellite, the
Anik A1, in 1972.
The Argentine
Secretariat for Communications can be reached at +54 11 4347-9911 or via the
Web at http://www.secom.gov.ar. The Embassy of Canada in Argentina can be
reached at +54 11 4805-3032. Telesat is at http://www.telesat.ca.
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