ISLAMABAD, Dec 12: Pakistan’s first communication satellite Paksat, which will reach the 380 orbital slot on Dec 20, has been launched without a prior marketing strategy to sell 34 transponders and recover the cost without realizing that $2 million has to be paid annually as lease money to the Hughes Global Systems Satellite, an official source told Dawn.

The government has decided to acquire Hughes Global Systems Satellite (HGS3) on lease for five years at an initial cost of $4.5 million. The satellite was acquired after studying two options either to have ownership of all 34 transponders after paying $2 million annually or to share revenue on 60:40 ratio.

The government has opted for the first choice after realizing that the satellite has to provide communication backbone which would also be used for defence purposes.

The functionality test of the satellite is scheduled to be done from Jan 1 to 30, 2003.

Realizing the fact that the satellite has been acquired without preparing a marketing strategy, the newly-inducted minister for IT and Telecommunication, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari, on Thursday directed to expedite the preparation of the strategy for selling the transponders of Paksat.

Presiding over a review meeting on Paksat, during which a detailed briefing was given about the satellite to Awais Leghari, the participants apparently caught unaware as they had no answer when the minister inquired about the strategy to sell the transponders.

The briefing was given by chairman National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) AVM Azhar Maud.

After in-depth discussions on various aspects of the projects and progress, the minister was, however, assured that marketing strategy will be submitted to the minister within 15 days of its preparation.

The minister also directed that marketing strategy be expedited to get full financial benefits from the available transponders.

Realizing that Pakistan was at the verge of losing its orbital slot at 38 degree East on April 19, 2003, the federal cabinet had asked former science and technology minister Dr Attaur Rehman to take necessary steps to safeguard the national interest and ensure retention of the orbital slot which was very important from commercial and strategic point of view.

Pakistan had applied to International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for geo-stationary slots, but no progress was made until 1995 when the government re-applied for the slots on the expiry of the previous allotment. Unfortunately, the Paksat project could not materlize until mid-2001 when the present government took up the matter seriously.

The request for the proposal (RFP) was sent to the prospective bidders on February, 2002 and bids were opened on March 11, 2002.

The bids evaluation committee, headed by chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), examined the bids in detail and came to the conclusion that none of the proposals qualified to meet the RFP parameters.

It was, therefore, decided by the high-powered committee in its meeting on April 2, 2002 to constitute a negotiation committee to enter into direct negotiations with the satellite operators/owners and also directed Suparco to submit a PC-1 for the development of a new satellite.

Later, during a presentation given to President Pervez Musharraf, it was found that Hughes Global Systems satellite meets the requirements of Pakistan, besides, it was also available for relocation within the time constraint.

This is the same satellite which was launched in 1996 for Indonesia and had developed a power pack problem. Later, the same satellite was leased to Turkey as Anatolia-I but on the termination of the lease, the ownership went back to Hughes.

The power pack problem which still persists does not allow batteries to provide energy to the payload during the eclipse period of 88 days on an average of three hours per day between 11:00pm to 2:00pm.

The source, however, claimed that the payload was fully functional and the availability of the satellite transponder was more than 96 per cent despite outages during the eclipse period.

The source said that this problem has caused the cost of the satellite to come down significantly as similar satellites, not having this kind of problem, were available for about $50 million to $80 million.