Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) has denied Viasat’s request for the right to operate the Viasat 3 satellite in the Ka-band on the orbital position 70 degrees West, reports Teletime. The request from the US operator, which serves the residential broadband market in Brazil via the SGDC satellite in partnership with Telebras, aims to expand its capacity to Latin America in 2022. 

Viasat’s request was based on the priority to use the ITU position resulting from a previous coordination. However, this was contested by Claro’s StarOne, which already occupies the position in the C and Ku-bamds through the Starone C2 and plans to launch the StarOne D2 in 2021.