Why, yes, I do know more. I'm glad you asked.
Columbia is the new thorn-in-side company for Loral. They filed to use their Ku-band transponders at 37W(Orion 1's home) recently too. Columbia has some kind of parasitic relationship with NASA where they use the C-band transponders on the TDRS sats, and NASA uses the rest of the sat to communicate with the Shuttle, for instance. They also use an old beater sat they swindled from Intelsat. Orion filed long ago to use 47W:
Orion is authorized to operate an international separate
satellite system in the Atlantic Ocean Region ("AOR"). At present, Orion's F1 satellite occupies the 37.5ø W.L. orbital location and its F2 satellite is planned for the 47.0ø W.L. orbital location. In this application, Orion requests authority to construct a third Ku-band satellite in the AOR, the Orion F3, at 12.0ø W.L. According to
Orion, the F3 satellite will be based on the design and construction of the F1 and F2 satellites, and will use high-power, full-frequency re-use at Ku-band frequencies.
Columbia is claiming Orion waited too long(I think you have 5 years to use your slot or lose it, or you must be building a sat---lots of ways around the rules). If Loral wanted to, I suppose they could say, "Look, we were building Orion 2 for the last year specifically for this slot." That would solve a number of problems, including the Eutelsat controversey at 12.5W. If they launch into the slot with Orion 2, Columbia's claims become moot. Brazil, it seems, was also going to file to use that 47W slot but withdrew after Loral won the slot auction. It's up to the FCC now. Orion also has approval for a Ka-band sat at this slot, but that is way out in the future. Note that the wrangling over slots is becoming more common as we run out of what Schwartz calls "beachfront property." It will become more common as time goes on.
As for Telesat's complaints about the auction process---it appears their $100 million investment in ground equipment was not enough to grease the palms of those at Anatel who decided on the winner of the auction. Nobody said that doing business in foreign lands was simple, or clean.
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