PanAmSat [Nasdaq: SPOT] secured crucial approval to operate its PAS 9 satellite in Brazil last week from ANATEL, the government agency that regulates Brazilian telecommunications services.

The long-anticipated regulatory clearance was given to the company’s Brazilian subsidiary, PanAmSat do Brasil Ltda., to provide commercial service on the PAS-9 Ku-band payload for the delivery of video, data and Internet services across the country. PAS-9 will offer Brazil’s extensive broadband VSAT applications to serve the country’s growing telecommunications market.

The spacecraft will offer direct access to one of Latin America’s strongest economies, company officials said. The PAS 1R was the company’s first satellite to gain clearance to operate in Brazil.

PAS-9 is a Boeing 601 HP model satellite with 24 C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders that operates at 58 degrees West Longitude. Several transponders on the spacecraft’s Ku-band payload specifically are tailored to cover Brazil, while the spacecraft’s C-band payload serves as a video neighborhood for Latin America.

“People had been clamoring for this satellite,” said Kalpak Gude, PanAmSat’s vice president and associate general counsel. PanAmSat can now more fully “exploit” in-orbit capacity that it had launched in July 2000, Gude said.

PAS 9 has been operational since September 2000, serving Latin American countries where regulatory approval previously had been given.

“Customers have expressed very strong interest in this satellite,” Gude said. Now, several transponders on the PAS 9 will start adding Brazilian customers as contracts are signed, he added.

“We are eager to keep moving forward,” added Gonzalo de Dios, PanAmSat’s director of regulatory affairs and counsel.

The regulatory approval in Brazil builds upon momentum that PanAmSat has established within the past two years in Latin America by closing transponder-leasing deals with “major broadcasters,” said Carmen Gonzalez-Sanfeliu, PanAmSat’s vice president of Latin America operations.

Latin America service is aided by PAS-1R, the first PanAmSat satellite to receive ANATEL approval to operate in Brazil. The PAS 1R, with 36 C-band and 38 Ku-band transponders, operates at 45 degrees West longitude. The satellite offers value-added services throughout Brazil that include global program distribution, Internet backbone connectivity, business communications and data services, as well as special event and ad hoc services, company officials said.

PAS-1R, one of the largest and most powerful commercial geostationary satellites ever launched, serves the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa.

–Paul Dykewicz

(Kathryn Lancioni, PanAmSat, 203/210-8649)