The international procedure for registering orbital slots and frequency bands with the ITU, governed by first-come-first-served filing and a real use-it-or-lose-it deadline.
Frequency coordination is the procedure by which a state, acting on behalf of a satellite operator, files with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) a request to register an orbital slot and a frequency band, under a first-come-first-served principle tempered by a real bring-into-use deadline, which requires a satellite to actually occupy the slot within a set period or lose it. This procedure long suffered a well-documented abuse, speculative filings by countries with little or no space infrastructure of their own, hoping to resell or lease the rights obtained: between 1990 and 1991, the Kingdom of Tonga filed with the ITU for thirty-one geostationary orbital slots, far beyond any plausible national need, an episode the industry still remembers as the paper satellites affair, which pushed forward a debate on curbing speculative filings. For an insurer or a lender financing a satellite project, the strength of the client's frequency rights directly shapes the project's insurable value, since a perfectly functional satellite stripped of coordinated spectrum has no exploitable commercial value.
Between 1990 and 1991, the Kingdom of Tonga files with the ITU for thirty-one geostationary orbital slots, far beyond any national need, an episode the industry still remembers as the paper satellites affair.
UIT, ITU, Union internationale des télécommunications, bring into use, satellites papier