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MANGOSAT REGULATORY SUPPORT SERVICES
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Licenses & Permissions
In some cases, companies and/or end-users that wish to establish a VSAT or any other telecom network, or link for their own use must apply for permission or registration to own and operate the system. A license is then required. Not having such a license can be considered a criminal offence.
Why frequency / spectrum licensing is important:
The use of the radio spectrum is regulated, access is controlled, and rules for its use enforced because of the possibilities of interference between uncoordinated uses. Other reasons include “national security”, censorship, and protecting of political and financial interest.
In most countries – if not all – it is a mandatory bureaucratic process one must follow step by step. The procedures can be complicated, vague, long, and sometimes costly. Very often the process requires the involvement of legal and technical expertise.
Frequency and spectrum licensing processes however differ from country to country. Typically a cross border satcom related license (incl. VSAT) is the most complicated among all.
Mangosat Regulatory Support Services
On behalf of our customers Mangosat performs all work related to securing telecommunications authorisations such as determining the law, policy, and procedure applicable to said telecommunications authorisations, completing applications, negotiating agreements, following applications or negotiations through to conclusion, etc.
This webpage is under re-development and under construction. Services however are fully supported.
Some end-users may be subject to specific legal, procedural or policy requirements. For example, without limitation, transmission in the vicinity of airports may be subject to additional restrictions. Diplomatic missions, international aid organisations, and other non-commercial international organisations may in some cases benefit from privileged treatment at law or policy.
Licensing work for established systems that only require frequency change or equipment change typically require a different approach and incur lesser costs.
For each Service Order, Mangosat will determine the law, policy, and procedures applicable and will provide estimates of the total cost of all authorisations required. Included in the quotation is an educated estimate of the number of hours needed to perform all the works.
Important note: Mangosat cannot guarantee the timeframe within which the required licenses will be granted nor that they will be granted at all.”
After service order, Mangosat will perform all the works related to securing the required authorisations, licenses, permits, and registrations. Mangosat will complete the application, negotiate agreements, and follow applications or negotiations through to conclusion.
Mangosat can only quote (or apply) for license, permission, or registration if all critical basic details and requirements are known, have been disclosed, and that customer or end-user provides Mangosat with full cooperation.
Minimum input should be made available to Mangosat to make a reliable assessment. This includes:
Disclaimer: authorisations for the operation of VSAT systems are determined by national law and policy. Those can and do change, often without notice, potentially affecting costs, conditions, and availability of authorizations. Therefore, want our customers to understand and agree that securing licenses and permissions is dependent upon third parties such as governmental authorities and national operators and that Mangosat’s obligations in this regard are thus limited to employing its best efforts in the application, negotiation, and pursuance of the same.
TYPICAL VSAT LICENSE APPLICATION PREREQUISITES
Mangosat can only quote (or apply) for a license, permission or registration if all critical basic details and requirements are known and that customer or end-user provides Mangosat with full cooperation.
Minimum input should be made available to Mangosat to make a reliable assessment. This includes:
Some end-users may be subject to specific legal, procedural or policy requirements. For example, without limitation, transmission in the vicinity of airports may be subject to additional restrictions. Diplomatic missions, international aid organizations and other non-commercial international organizations may in some cases benefit from privileged treatment at law or policy. Licensing work for established systems that require frequency change or equipment change typically require a different approach and incur lesser costs.
Please Note: Authorizations for the operation of VSAT systems are determined by national law and policy. Those can and do change, often without notice, potentially affecting costs, conditions and availability of authorizations.
TYPICAL TERMS & CONDITIONS MANGOSAT VSAT LICENSING SERVICES
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
First-Time Licenses vs. Amending Old Licenses
Unless we are made aware (= hard proof) of pre-existing authorizations, our assessments necessarily assume that the applicant has no pre-existing network in the target country and no previous license. If Customer does have an existing VSAT network, even if not identical to the one it now proposes to roll out, it may well already have several licenses. This would improve their situation and we would want to review such authorizations before going ahead.
In short, getting a license is harder and costlier for the first one. Amending one to fit a new set of technical specifications is almost always easier, faster and cheaper.
How to Read the Excel Table
The assessments are meant to allow a reader with no particular training in telecommunications regulation to get a precise, transparent and reliable picture of costs, timing & feasibility for any jurisdiction on Earth in plain language. As with all high-level generalizations, these assessments necessarily abstract out some important regulatory points. But let the apparent simplicity of the layout not mislead: it is no vague guestimate, but a precise reading based on law and practical experience.
Display and Manner of Calculation of Government Fees
All of the amounts included in the table refer to fees payable by Customer to the relevant (government) authorities for a license. There is no mark-up.
As their name indicates, Columns G and H refer to fees payable once only, and then fees payable on a recurring (annual) basis. While simplified, these typically represent several different types of fees, totaled up for a single number. For instance, a one-time fee of US$653 might indicate a filing fee of US$50, type approval fees of US$352 and an inspection fee of US$201.
How are the fees calculated?
They are computed from the verifiable fees set out in the applicable national regulations. They also take into account the fact that some fees provided by law are not always applied, and that conversely some are applied that are not enshrined and law (we of course include only legitimate fees). For instance, a common example is that some countries will require the applicant to hire a local engineer accredited by the regulator to perform a frequency interference study, without which the regulator will not issue the license. Though not covered in the regulations (because it is not a government fee, but a negotiated fee with a private entity), we compute that type of expense into the total because our users want to know what they actually need to budget for, ahead of time.
In some cases, difference in interpretation of laws, and the arbitrariness inherent in administrative decision-making can cause different outcomes even if the ingredients are the same.
When we refer to arbitrariness, we do not mean corruption or even lesser kinds of malevolent arbitrariness. We simply mean that a telecommunications bureaucrat may in a given case apply (rightly or wrongly) discretion to effect a particular result, even when acting in good faith.
For example, let us pick Chad, which would normally raise a number of delicate issues for MSF operations given events in the East and national conflict. Chadian telecommunications regulations literally suffer from a defect in drafting, so that even an honest bureaucrat can read them and be brought to calculate VSAT fees in three different ways. This would be of little consequence if the difference in interpretation were slight, but the margin between the least cost Chadian interpretation and the highest bracket can run to over U$$20,000 annually (depending on the type and capacity of the network).
Further, the telecommunication’s regulator is often caught between competing views of international organizations; occasionally viewing them as partner entities deserving of light-handed treatment, occasionally identifying them with suspect enemy factions. Telecommunications are so ubiquitous and mundane today that it is often forgotten that to most governments on the planet, they are viewed as a critical component of national security and economic development. This routinely causes tension in application of regulations. However, to repeated practice, and detailed knowledge of both regulations and administrative incentives, the outcome of such tensions can be calculated and managed reasonably well.
So, both the legislative errors of writing and the relationship issues can lead to different fee interpretations in Chad (but also CAR, Myanmar, Syria and other countries). In such cases, it is not that we cannot precisely estimate a result. As the foregoing hopefully demonstrates, we can do so very precisely. Rather, it is that the result depends on future events which, by definition, have not yet occurred. In such cases, what we do is (a) consider the applicant’s specific situation (i.e. we will imagine an application by Customer, look at its Charter, its history in the region and mentally drive it through tile exampled Chadian process to see what happens and (b) average out previous similar applications in Chad to arrive at the most frequently occurring result.
We wish to reiterate that here I take an example of diverging interpretations which can affect the analysis. In the vast majority of cases there is no such difference to consider and the fee will be precisely as set out in our analysis.
Licensing efforts performed includes, but is not limited to the following:
What happens if I don’t register my remote terminal and radio frequencies?
Compliance with the laws and policies of host nations is critical working knowledge for operating in areas where VSAT data transmission is a necessity. Neglecting compliance of a sovereign nations authority can lead to any or all of the following:
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