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Further Reading

APMT

The Asia Pacific Mobile Telecommunications Satellite (APMT) consortium, in which Chinese participants initially held two-thirds equity, was formed in December 1995. Participants in the US$640 million consortium include China Satellite Launch & Tracking Control General, China Aero-Space Corporation, China Unicom Satellite Telecommunication Co Ltd and China Telecommunications Broadcast Satellite Corp., along with Singapore Telecom and Singapore Technologies Telemedia. APMT services will be administered by Asia Pacific Mobile Telecommunications (APMT) Satellite Pte Ltd, a company incorporated in Singapore. Subsequent to the formation of APMT the consortium was joined by Asia Mobile Telecommunications (Thailand) Co.,Ltd., a subsidiary of the Telephone Organization of Thailand [TOT]. With new partners the proportion of investors taking part in APMT included 50% from the People's Republic of China, 25% from Singapore, 10% from Thailand and 15% from other countries to be determined. In early 1998 ST Telemedia assumed Singapore Telecom's share when the company withdrew from from the project.

APMT is a regional mobile satellite project providing seamless mobile telecommunications services, through National Service Providers in each country, in the Asia Pacific region via a geostationary earth orbit satellite system and a network of ground gateway stations. The services include voice telephony, facsimile and data transmission. Communication is via handheld, vehicular or fixed-site terminals. Frequent business travellers in the region are also expected to use APMT for roaming purposes. Coverage will be available from India in the west to Japan in the east, and from China in the north to Indonesia in the south. The system is expected to have 400,000 subscribers and be profitable within two years of inaugurating service in 2000. APMT will sell mobile telephony services at a wholesale rates of $0.30 to $0.50 per minute, with resellers in each country retailing the service at $0.70 to $1.00 per minute.

APMT has ordered a turnkey system from Hughes that includes one satellite, one spare satellite, five gateways, one network operations center, one satellite operations center, and an initial purchase of 70,000 user terminals. Each satellite will handle 16,000 simultaneous duplex circuits, from users in China, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines. The satellites are high-power versions of Hughes' top-selling, body-stabilized spacecraft, the HS 601. Each will have two solar wings covered in gallium arsenide solar cells generating about 7 kilowatts of power to provide 6 kilowatts of payload power. The Hughes geomobile satellite system features an innovative, lightweight, 12.25-meter deployable antenna, and onboard digital signal processing and beamforming. The first satellite will be available for launch in the year 2000 [initially the the first satellite was scheduled to be launched in late 1998].