Page 100 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Foreign Communication Policy and DBS: 1962-1984 89

Also in 1977, WARC-77- held to allocate DBS frequencies, power
levels and GSO assignments - formally restricted countries from
appropriating those orbital positions or frequency channels not
assigned to them or without the permission of the country holding
the assignment. These assignments were facilitated by dividing the
world into three DBS service areas: Region 1 (including Europe, the
Soviet Union and Africa); Region 2 (Greenland and the Americas);
and Region 3 (Asia, Australia and New Zealand). Geostationary
orbital slots, each capable of accommodating more than one satellite,
were allocated 6 degrees apart to prevent signal interference. US and
Canadian delegates to W ARC-77 considered these decisions to be
premature and unnecessarily restrictive given the likelihood of
significant technological advancements. As a result of their com-
plaints, the Region 2 allocation meeting was delayed until 1983. 60
Nevertheless, the W ARC-77 allocation planning process implicitly
reaffirmed the supremacy of prior consent. Delegates from
France and Sweden, howev~r. left the conference seeking a more
explicit and universal recognition of prior consent as an undebatable
legal principle. 61 WARC-77 failed to define the term 'unavoidable
spillover' 62 and the ITU did not suggest a process through which
one country could deal with the unwanted signals generated by
another. 63
Taken together, WARC-ST and WARC-77 made transnational
DBS legally permissible as long as, first, it took place on a frequency
channel legally held by or legally provided for use to the transmitting
country; and second, it could not be reasonably limited to the
intended receiving country.
In 1982, a draft resolution was presented in the COPUOS by
officials representing Brazil. 64 While reiterating much of what pre-
vious UN resolutions had said, this resolution included a section
explicitly supporting the principle of prlor consent. For the first time
in the history of the COPUOS, the resolution was passed by majority
vote rather than a consensus agreement. This undermining of the
consensus procedure in COPUOS itself was significant. The consensus
procedure had been established in 1961 in order to appease the Soviet
Union which, at the time, insisted that the COPUOS and its subcom-
mittees should act only through unanimous agreement. The United
States disagreed and supported the majority rule procedures practiced
in the General Assembly. With the COPUOS resolution supporting
the necessity of a prior consent agreement on DBS transmissions, US
officials suddenly became strong advocates of the consensus standard