TNAG-2857-FCO40-4110-Satellite-Licensing-and-Asia-Satellite-Telecommunications-Co-1993 — Page 55

ORION

Mr C Elliot Bardsley

Vice President

Business Development

Orion Asia Pacific Corporation

2440 Research Boulevard

Suite 400

Rockville

MD 20850

United States of America

DRAFT

You wrote to Paul Salvidge on 23 April requesting that the UK join

with the United States and possibly Canada in a group notification

to the ITU of Orion's proposed Asia-Pacific Satellite system.

Given the close industrial links between Orion and British

Aerospace, I am delighted that you have approached us with this

suggestion. The UK's traditionally strong association with the

region and Hong Kong in particular, is an additional reason why

your proposal is welcome. Orion will certainly continue to receive

the UK's strong support in its continuing efforts to bring greater

competition to the satellite communications market.

In principle, we will be pleased to join the Advanced Notification

for APSC's satellite system to the ITU and we are currently

checking that our responsibilities to other satellite systems do

not preclude this. You will appreciate that it would be

embarrassing for all parties if the UK was to to find itself both

supporting Orion and negotiating with it on behalf of another

system, because of technical incompatibility of the proposals.

have no reason to think that this may be the case, but confirmation

will take a few more days.

I

I will write to you again shortly.