Olusola Bello
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has granted space landing permits to 73 commercial satellite operators allowing the operators to provide commercial satellite broadband services to users in Nigeria.
NCC in pursuant to its powers under Section 2 and Section 70 (2) of the Act developed Commercial Satellite Communications Guidelines for the telecommunications sector in Nigeria and has granted approval for the space stations to beam their satellite to Nigeria.
The landing permits became effective from 2019 to 2021 for all the commercial satellite providers. The permits cover a period of three to 13 years depending on which provider.
The Commission in a document made available on its website has been putting in place deliberate policies towards facilitating provisioning of Space based communications services and has developed Licensing Framework to facilitate investments and entry into the Nigerian market for provision of communications services.
The Commission already have document consists of the official list of Space Stations authorized by the Nigerian Communications Commission as stipulated under Section (13) subsection (1b) of the Guidelines on Commercial Satellite Communications that guilds its operation.
This list provides the information for each Space Station Landing Permit holder such as Space Station’s home administration, orbital location; name of Space Station/Operator; Frequency bands, Frequency range and Service type (either Fixed or Mobile satellite service). It also includes Bandwidth and Landing Permit duration.
The NCC said that the will be updated biannually to reflect the status of market access and all the Landing permits issued or modified (depending on whether the Commission has been notified with a request for a Landing Permit or a request to remove a Space Station from service or the Landing Permit of a Space Station has lapsed).
Some of the recipients of the space landing permits include INTELSAT LLC with 24 C – Bands and Ku-Bands permits; EUTELSAT S.A. with nine Ku-Bands, C-Bands permits; Avanti HYLAS 2 Limited with one Ka-Band permit; and YAHSAT with one C-band and two Ka-Bands permits.
Others are NSS Licensee B.V. with five C=Bands and five Ku-Bands permits; OneWeb with one Ku-Band and one Ka-Band permits; INMARSAT with three Ka-Band, one L-Band and one XL-Band permits; IRIDIUM with eight L-Band permits; EUTELSAT S.A. with two Ku – Band and Ka-Band permits; NSS LICENSEE B.V. with five Ka-Band permits; SWARM Technologies Inc. with one VHF – Band permit; AST and Science with one Q/V and 3GPP Bands permit.
Rest are: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) with one Ka and Ku Bands permit; and Globalstar Inc. with C – Band, L – Band and S – Band permits.