Iridium Inc has fired the first shot in the star wars that will determine who controls the market for satellite telecommunications services, hears Lloyd’s List. Candace Johnson, vice-president for government affairs and telecommunications policy for Iridium in Bonn, said the company would ask the regulatory authorities to look into alleged cross subsidies helping Inmarsat-P, its main competitor. Ms Johnson said Iridium had already contacted the UK Office of Telecommunications regulatory authority about Inmarsat-P, the handheld satellite telephone network of the London-headquartered International Mobile Satellite Organisation, due to be launched in 1999. In January, Inmarsat disclosed that it had received $1,400m in investment commitments from 38 of its members for Inmarsat-P. But Inmarsat itself has invested $150m in the project and regulators would have to ensure that there was no cross-financing of Inmarsat-P investment through Inmarsat, Ms Johnson said. We expect that Oftel and the European Commission will make Inmarsat-P show it has paid back Inmarsat for all the marketing, technical work and system development… We want the Commission to apply the same rules to Inmarsat-P that they applied to DeTeSystem GmbH, she added, referring to the European Commission’s requirement of Deutsche Bundespost Telekom to prove that DeTeSystem, its business communications subsidiary, had received no financing from any of Telekom’s monopoly activities. Olof Lundberg, the director general of Inmarsat, has dismissed the Iridium charges as unfounded and says that an affiliate company has been formed, which is separate from Inmarsat. Pat McDougal, manager of strategic planning at Inmarsat, said the organisation was aware of the filing with Oftel. He would not comment on it in detail because he had not seen its contents.
