Brussels - A mountaineer injured in the Pyrenees calls for help on his satellite phone, then downloads Wagner's Ring Cycle to his handset to take his mind off the agony until his rescuers arrive. It reads like a science-fiction scenario, but under a new European Commission (EC) proposal, all European citizens - not just mountaineers - could have that possibility within five years' time.
"The potential for Europe-wide mobile satellite services (MSS) is massive - think mobile television, think broadband (internet) for all, think public protection and disaster relief," EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement announcing the move on Wednesday.
Since science-fiction titan Arthur C Clarke first postulated the concept of the geostationary satellite as a medium for communication in 1945, space-based communications systems have grown to an industry worth 70 billion euro (94.36 billion dollars) a year.
Altogether, services based on electromagnetic broadcasts, such as radio, TV and wireless telephony, are worth a quarter of a trillion euro a year in the EU alone, EC spokesman Martin Selmayr said.
Mobile satellite services, which could offer products as diverse as satellite-based TV programmes, broad-band internet connections and interactive gaming to handheld mobile receivers, clearly have the potential to revolutionize that lucrative market.
But with the exception of satellite-based mobile telephony, which is already a well-established application, MSS face two serious hurdles on their way to becoming commercially viable.
Not only is the technology needed to set up such systems expensive: current EU legislation, based on the needs of 27 member states, is ill-equipped to serve an industry whose scope is far-reaching both literally and metaphorically.
"The problem is that companies who want to offer MSS in the EU at the moment have to have a licence to do so in every EU member state," Selmayr told journalists.
It is that issue which the EC's proposal is intended to address. Under the proposal, the EC would serve as a "one-stop shop" to license companies wishing to offer MSS across the EU, with EU experts estimating that 3 companies could share the 2-gigahertz waveband allocated for the services.
"The new way the EC proposes to select mobile satellite services will give Europe's industry the necessary confidence to invest in new EU-wide services for citizens. It will also help bridge the digital divide by improving coverage in the EU's remote areas," Reding said.
If the proposal is approved by the EU's other decision-making bodies, the European Parliament and the European Council, the selection process should start in early 2008. The winning companies could then be licensed early in 2009, with commercial operations expected to begin some 2 years later.
"This is a beauty contest, not an auction. If demand exceeds spectrum availability, companies will be selected according to pre-defined criteria," Selmayr said.
Such criteria are likely to include consumer benefit and competitiveness, efficient use of the allocated spectrum, EU-wide coverage, and perhaps impact on and contribution to public-policy areas such as safety and public order, he added.
Many questions remain to be answered. The licensing of the airwaves has traditionally been a prerogative of national governments, and any transfer of that right to the EC could be seen as holding implications for national financing and security.
And with commercial exploitation at least four years away, the key question of the cost to the consumer is as yet unclear.
But with member states and major industry players reported to be strongly in favour of the initiative, even the EU's remotest hills may yet come alive to the sound of music as MSS take their place in the spectrum of twenty-first century consumer electronics.
