Chinese Satellites for Tongan positions [1]
Wednesday, December 1, 1999 - 10:00. Updated on Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - 15:13.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 14, no. 4, December 1999.
Pacific Asia Global Holdings Ltd., the marketing arm of TongaSat is doing more than just marketing Tonga’s orbital slots, said Semisi Panuve, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer, at its Hong Kong office.
“In the beginning the main objective was to do TongaSat’s marketing and business strategy. TongaSat is based in Tonga and all the satellite companies that want orbital satellite filing don’t really know where Tonga is, so the positioning of the Pacific Asia Global Holdings in Hong Kong has really given us a boost, not just for TongaSat, but also for Tonga.”
Semisi said that the Hong Kong operation, owned by Princess Pilolevu Tuita, intended to concentrate on satellites and telecommunications, and to introduce the Kingdom of Tonga’s filing, “but from there it has just grown like crazy. We do other jobs. In trade we connect up people in China and in Tonga for business opportunities. The normalisation of the diplomatic relationship between China and Tonga was facilitated through this office. There is a wide variety of businesses, all have to do with building up Tonga, and developing Tonga through Hong Kong as the major business hub for this region.”
Wider world
Semisi is an engineer by profession, but since he moved from the TongaSat office in Nuku‘alofa, to the Pacific Asia Global Holdings office in Hong Kong in April 1997, he has become more involved in marketing and administration. “It is a very good experience for me, it is an opportunity I never dreamt of having. I have a technical background, but since I have been here, working with Anna, and the Princess’s local partner, Fred Wang, my horizons have expanded, my eyes are opened up to a much wider world. I think I have been very blessed with this kind of work.”
Semisi believed that the normalisation of the diplomatic relations between Tonga and China, and the recent State visit to China had greatly advanced the opportunities for his company and for Tonga to do business in China.
World Trade
“We have been trying to get into China, just like everyone else. China has applied to be a member of the World Trade Organisation, and that application is still pending, but people see it as happening next year. We started investing time, effort and money into starting up a ground infrastructure, a network, doing it on a small scale. We set up points of presence in the USA, Hong Kong and in China, and although it is just money spending at the moment, when the WTO comes through we are there, and it will help boost our position. With satellite sites, it is very hard to get into. The Ministry of Information in China has just undergone a revamp of their structure and a lot of the State-owned enterprises have been pushed, government is becoming less and less involved.
“We have been trying for over two years to get in, and the trips that His Majesty made helps to facilitate this. The China Orient, one of the satellite companies in China has since asked us to enter into a joint relationship with them, and that was the meeting we held in Beijing last week. The details have not been entered into but the intent and the purpose is to jointly work together. This company has only one satellite in orbit, in one of China’s filings. They want to expand but they do not have any other positions, which are well co-ordinated, and they see the TongaSat filing, which can be easily be used with the satellite that they may wish to put up. We are still in a preliminary discussion. I have just talked to them this morning. From our last meeting they have referred everything back to the Ministry of Information for their direction, but they sound very positive.”
Six over Asia
Semisi said that the impact of the State Visit continued to unfold. “We have a client in Hong Kong called APT Satellite Holdings, who has already leased two positions from TongaSat, but now they are interested in looking into two other positions of ours. Their interest was there before the State visit, but, of course, the indirect help of His Majesty being here does wonders anyway.”
Semisi said that TongaSat had six orbital slots over Asia, “four are primarily targeted for Asia, 130, 134, 138, 142.5 degrees east. They are occupied, two by APT, and two by Lockheed Martin Inter Sputnik, a venture that we signed last year, as a result of our being here in Hong Kong. The other two further west, 70 and 83 degress, can see part of Asia, but they are more of a Europe-Asia kind of satellite coverage. So the four over Asia have been taken, but, of course, in each of these positions we have several filings, so they are using only one frequency in each position. You can stack four satellites in each position, so you can say that we have only a quarter utilisation of these Asian positions according to the filings. But filing, and being able to have a satellite up there are two different things,” he said.
Semisi said that the latest filings by TongaSat were made in 1996 for KA band, “but that is very much a developing technology, and not many people have put up satellites using these kind of frequencies. Although we have the filing, it is a bit too early for us to expect to have a satellite for that kind of frequency, but we have done it with a hope for a quick development of that kind of technology so that people will be looking for KA band filing.”
Pacific Satellite
With telecommunications a booming industry, Semisi said that the satellite communication business was very competitive, “there are not many people that you can lease orbital slots to. Your client base is very limited, it is only for big companies, and most of them are in America. These are privately owned companies with a huge resource fund to put satellites into space. It costs a quarter of a billion US dollars to put one satellite into space. It is something that Tonga is not able to do, and that is why we engage in satellite filing now to raise enough capital, and hopefully, one day we will be able to have a satellite that Tonga owns or jointly owns, and that actually services Tonga and the Pacific,” he said.