Inmarsat, SES and Telesat continued to urge the...

Inmarsat, SES and Telesat continued to urge the FCC not to attempt to impose regulatory fees on foreign-licensed satellite operators. Doing so would be unjustified, they said in joint reply comments in dockets 14-92, 13-140 and 12-201 (http://bit.ly/1yX0CqD). If the FCC decides a mechanism to recover costs of processing U.S. market access requests for foreign satellites is needed, “it should do so through earth station regulatory fees,” they said. An FCC decision to adopt a fee could lead to a proliferation of fees around the world that would harm operators of U.S.-licensed satellites serving other countries, they said. They opposed Intelsat’s call for adopting a new fee, saying Intelsat improperly relies on application processing costs to support an annual regulatory fee and it “disregards the real risk of a proliferation of market access fees around the world.”