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Sue Green

OPTUS, Australia's new telecommunications carrier, is insistent the loss of its A$100 million  (HK$533 million) communications satellite will not affect its  services, including the introduction of pay-television to Australia.

  Optus has officially washed its hands of the loss of the B2 satellite, adrift in space after its launch from China's Xichang launch centre on December 21.

   It said its contract with the satellite's maker, Hughes Space  and Communications Co, was for an orbiting satellite, so it is up  to Hughes to work out with the  Chinese what went wrong and to  provide a replacement.

  An Optus spokesman told the  South China Morning Post  there  was a one in six chance of a satellite failing and its deal with Hughes had included building components for a replacement.

  ''Now all we have to do is use  those components and build the  short-build-time components. Hughes is working on a replacement satellite. It will be the B3  and it will be ready in about 18  months,'' he said.

  The loss comes as Optus, chosen in November 1991 by the federal government as rival to the government-owned former monopoly, Australian Overseas  Telecommunications Corporation (AOTC), is locked in bitter  competition with AOTC.

  The B2 satellite was a key part  of Optus' plan to offer new telecommunications services, including MobileSat, the world's first domestic mobile satellite communications system. It was  also to carry switched telephone  traffic within Australia and New  Zealand communications traffic.

  But it is the satellite's role in  the introduction of pay-TV that  is attracting the most attention in  Australia.

  It carried the six transponders  that were to provide 10 pay-TV  channels for a mid-1994 start-up,  by using new digital compression  technology.

  Optus paid up to A$800 million for the government's Aussat  satellite company last year and its licence requires it to make its  transponders available for pay-TV.

  The Optus spokesman said the loss of the B2 meant Optus  was re-configuring the use of its  existing satellites: the A1, A2 and  A3, bought from Aussat, and the  B1, launched in September 1992,  after its first launch attempt in  March was abandoned whenbooster rockets on China's Long  March rocket failed.

  This would mean ''a little bit  of extra administrative hassle'' for some customers, including paperwork and re-configuring antennae, but Optus had no plans to pay them compensation  or to seek compensation from Hughes.

  ''I think people understand it  is a high risk business,'' he said.

  He said the A1 was about to  run out of fuel and all traffic had  already been moved from it to  the new B1. By April all traffic  from the A2 would be moved to  the A3 and the A2, due to run out  of fuel at the end of 1993, would  be ''turned off''.

  That existing capacity could  provide one transponder dedicated to pay-TV and one to MobileSat - enough to meet Optus' commitments to the government, he said.

  One transponder could provide 10 channels through digital  compression, which will be ready by the time the operators  come along and get licensed, the  spokesman said.

  Optus' majority Australian shareholder is Mayne Nickless who, with AIDC, AMP and National Mutual, hold 51 per cent.  Its foreign owners are the United  States regional telephone company Bell South and Britain's Cable and Wireless.

  Its competition with AOTC effectively began in June last year when it launched its analogue mobile phone service.

  Telephone customers in major Australian cities have had the  choice of dialling the number one before the area code when making a domestic long-distance  or overseas call since November  1992, thus making the call through Optus, instead of through AOTC'sdomestic arm,  Telecom.

  Just why the B2 did not ''get  up there'' is still unclear.

  The China Great Wall Industrial Corp has said the launch was normal, but Hughes engineers who studied a video of the  launch spotted a fireball they say  is ''indicative of an explosion'' 48 seconds after the launch. Nothing appeared to have gone  wrong during the launch, but the  satellite could not now be contacted.

  The Optus spokesman said the company would issue a press  statement in about a month outlining its full response and contingency plan.

   It expected that when Hughes  and the Chinese company had worked out what went wrong ''they'll let us know as a matter of  courtesy''.



Responsibility for lost satellite still up in the air