Brave New World: The Satellite Industry In The Middle East And North Africa (MENA)

Introduction

The multi-billion dollar satellite industry is an area that has seen phenomenal growth in the private and public sectors in the last fifty years and is expected to continue to grow for the foreseeable future. What makes such growth particularly remarkable is that the satellite industry is extremely expensive: satellite projects (i.e., manufacture, launch and insurance of one satellite) typically require upfront investment of at least one hundred million US Dollars. The commercial satellite industry is particularly active. While North America and Western Europe have the largest commercial satellite transponders, the MENA Region, South Asia and Latin American markets, and to a certain extent emerging markets such as China, Brazil and Indonesia, are fast developing. In light of these rapid developments, this article provides a snapshot of the satellite industry with a particular focus on the commercial telecommunications sector in the MENA region and a survey of the pertinent international and regional legal and regulatory framework.

History of Satellites

The "Space Age" began in the mid-1950s. The Russians launched the first satellite, Sputnik 01, in October 1957 and sent Laika, a dog, into orbit less than a month later. Intelsat launched the first communications satellite, the "Earlybird", in 1965 and a mere four years later, the first man landed on the moon on July 21, 1969. During the 1970s and 1980s, Japan, China, the UK, Brazil, Mexico and Luxembourg all launched their first satellites.

In 1985, the first satellite launched in the MENA region was Arabsat-1A by the Arab Satellite Communications Organisation (Arabsat), which was founded by the twenty-one members of the Arab League in 1976. Arabsat owns and operates four satellites in the MENA region at 26º and 30.5º East – touted as the youngest and fastest growing satellite fleet in the MENA region, launching one satellite per year over four years from 2008.

Nilesat, the Egyptian Satellite Company, has two satellites, Nilesat 101 and Nilesat 102 at 7º West and has additional space capacity on Nilesat 103 (Atlantic Bird 4) at the same orbital position. Both Arabsat and Nilesat, the mainstays of the MENA satellite industry, provide the gamut of satellite services, as does relative new-comer Noorsat, a global communications company headquartered in Bahrain. By 2011, SmartSat, a recently formed alliance between a Jordanian and a Kuwaiti company, hopes to have launched the MENA...