Ondas Media, a company that hopes to bring satellite radio to Europe, has suffered a bit of a setback when it comes to getting access to necessary spectrum.
The Madrid-based company has been lobbying at Geneva, looking for spectrum to be allocated in the 1467-1492 MHz Broadcast Satellite Services band. Specifically Ondas was seeking an amendment to the current rule where Geostationary satellites no longer get priority in terms of access to such spectrum.
Ondas wants priority for their Highly Elliptical Orbit scheme instead. But now it's being reported that the World Telecommunications Conference (WRC) in Geneva is postponing any decision on the request until the next WRC.
The next WRC takes place... in 2011.
Ondas has said it is scheduled to begin programming and web-enabled services in 2008 and full subscription-based, advertising-free commercial services in late 2009.
[Rapid TV News via KimAndrewElliot]
When did David Rehr go to work for World Telecommunications Conference (WRC)?
Frankly, I never saw how a European equivalent to satellite could be viable. How do you come up with a broadcast collection to over a dozen different languages and cultures? To me, satellite only works here because the US is a unified continental entity.
And DAB is also quite viable in Europe, with an early lock on the early adopters.
You could deliver a hundred channels of music, without substantial disc jockey involvement (after all, English-language songs regularly top the charts in non-English-speaking countries). But the appeal of that over an iPod is negligible, IMO.
Coming in 2009: europe.orbitcast.com !!
The WRC has historically been slower than an elderly snail going uphill! Back in the day, when HF commo was still king, they would take 10 years to make a decision on anything involving frequency spectrum---just ask any older ham radio operator or shortwave radio station owner.