EU lawmakers overwhelmingly approved rules on selecting mobile sa...

rural areas, an EU Parliament Industry Committee spokeswoman said. The text adopted Wednesday sets pan-European rules for selecting mobile satellite services providers, including a ban on assigning a single applicant more than 15 MHz for earth-to-space and 15 MHz for space-to-earth communications. Lawmakers and officials of member countries on at the EU’s periphery were “very concerned that the selection criteria might favor operators who could only provide a service covering the center of Europe,” report author Fiona Hall (U.K., Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) said during Tuesday’s debate. The new law requires operators to cover at least 60 percent of overall EU land area from the time a system starts operating, the committee spokeswoman said. After no more than seven years, the system must reach all 27 countries covering at least half the population and 60 percent of each state’s land area, she said. If demand exceeds spectrum available, the European Commission will choose operators according to certain criteria, stressing pan-European geographic coverage. Eligibility also depends on consumer and competitive benefits, spectrum efficiency and public objectives such as protecting health, safety and security, she said. The ITU has designated the 2-GHz band for use by mobile satellite systems. EU governments have given up their national spectrum allocation rights to the 1980 to 2010 MHz and 2170 to 2200 MHz bands to make way for pan-EU services, the spokeswoman said.