Sirius & XM satellites to maintain until at least 2016

Mel Karmazin said before a House telecommunications subcommittee hearing yesterday that both XM's and Sirius' satellite infrastructure would continue to operate for at least 10 to 12 years.

It's nothing that hasn't been said before, but Mel was clarifying for subcommittee chairman Edward Markey (D-MA) about whether or not the merger could result in spectrum being freed up for other purposes.

Sirius has previously announced that they will be launching three new satellites, the first one - a geostationary one - will obviously remain in operation for quite some time. The 2016 timeline was a theoretical one that was simply meant to illustrate to the Congressman that we have a very long time before the networks themselves would change significantly.

The main point, that apparently needs to be constantly clarified (well, at least for Congress), is that both XM's and Sirius' current customers will continue to operate for current subscribers.

Gary Parsons, XM's Chairman, during the Q&A session of the merger announcement conference call said that "certain [XM] satellites" do have the ability to broadcast across the entire 25Mhz spectrum, but that would be much further out. It's a point that was echoed by Karmazin at the hearing mentioning that Sirius' own (newer?) satellites might have this ability. Whether or not these capabilities will open up spectrum for better sound-quality and/or additional services is still unclear. What we do know is that the cross-service abilities would be first done at the chip-set level (i.e., interoperable radios) in the much nearer term.

Sirius' new geostationary satellite is planned to be launched sometime in late 2008.

[MarketWatch]