 Welcome to WRC 23, the World Rady Communication Conference being held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and we're here in the very last week, in fact, the second to last day and I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Mindel de la Torre, who is the Chief Regulatory and International Strategy Officer for OmniSpace. Mindel, welcome to the studio. Well, thank you. Glad to be here. Now, I was looking back on the history of our interviews. In fact, the last one we did was 2019 at WRC, the World Rady Communication Conference as well, each time I shake that time. We're not just that meeting like this. I know. Well, it's been four years between the two. And I just really wanted to ask you if things have changed. And I know that last time we were talking very much about things like the satellite that you're looking after was the size of a school bus. And I know that things have certainly decreased in size and there's a lot more things that are going on up there. So what's it like at the moment? Well, I mean, since four years ago, since 2019, boy, really things really have changed. I mean, now everybody's talking about NGSO, non-Geostationary satellites, which is what we are. And so at that point, you know, the SpaceX hadn't gotten off the ground yet. Kuiper hadn't gone off the ground yet. So it was very incipient. And so now here we are and we're very excited about being part of it. And we're different than they are because we're actually a mobile satellite service. And so they tend to be the fixed service, fixed satellite service. And we're mobility and connectivity everywhere is what we are. And that's some of the big issues that were here at this conference. So we're very interested in the result here. So that's what I was going to ask you as well. I mean, obviously this conference is all about spectrum. I know that last time you were looking at a particular band of spectrum that you were particularly keen on making sure that there was room for you in there. What are your priorities this time? Well, our main priority was to get an agenda item for 2027 on the S-band to expand it because as we've said, you know, now it used to be that you would provide mobile satellite service. Now we're looking at non-terrestrial networks, 3GPP kind of things where it's in your handset. That's such a difference, you know, from before. And so having that ubiquity means that we need more spectrum and there's all these different players that are very interested in it. And so that was what we were here to do and we were able to do it. So we're very happy about that. We were also talking about the incident of things last time and that was pretty much IoT. People hadn't really heard about it too much at that stage. What's the landscape like now in terms of IoT, Internet of Things and in terms of connectivity and in terms of, of course, satellites as well? Yes. Well, we actually have a live demo if you want to come out and see the live demo for, which is the mobile satellite service using IoT, you know, terminals. So we have anything from a tracker on an elephant that's about this big and that, you know, has this huge collar that goes around the elephant to doing door openers or doing temperature, doing, you know, actually your imagination is where all of the sensors can go. Our satellite is the connectivity. So we have, and then we have the connectivity on the ground here. And, you know, it's really developed and you have all these different sort of market, marketing and markets for IoT. And so we are seeing that, you know, as one of the areas, I mean, I think it's a little hard to make your whole business case on that. So we're looking at more the direct to device for our future system and we launched two satellites. So that was good last year to be the first part of the next generation system. So we hope to have that up and running very soon doing direct to device. Now, we've had a lot of guests in here talking about space sustainability. I wanted to ask you what is your perspective of that? Yeah, I think that obviously it's important and it's in every company's interest that there is a sustainable, you know, way of keeping space free of collisions and anything else. So, you know, we don't want our satellites to be colliding with anybody else and nobody else wants that either, right? And so there is, I think, sometimes I think that there's no real view of how the industry is interested. I think they might think that industry is interested in not doing anything on it. I mean, you know, I'm probably one of the outliers, but I actually see that there's a role for the ITU here. The ITU has expertise, you know, other agencies, UN agencies like UNUSA don't really have that expertise. But here you have a great amount of expertise and so it could be a new area for the ITU that I think would be good for all of mankind and womankind. Talking about womankind, I was just about to get onto that because, of course, the network of women has been very active since we've spoken a number of times. You're wearing a wristband that's got the network of women now for WRC 23. I know that there were a couple of events here as well, but I wanted to ask you in terms of the percentages, in terms of the numbers of women attending this event now and other ITU events, are you pleased with the progress on that? Oh, I really am. You know, you can look at who's on the microphone, who is sitting up on the dais. Really, it's changed so much and I do think that it is one of those, one of the issues that we had was that there were never any women that were in the queue to be a chair. And so I think that's one of the things that the network of women sort of tried to change was to get in early. So, you know, the head of the CPM was a woman this year, you know, with Cindy Cook. And then, you know, going forward, we've had a lot of young women coming in and taking, you know, a position like Luciana from, well, there's two Lucianas from Brazil actually that are chairs and it's really nice to see that. And I think that that and some, you know, African women now, you know, heading up the credentials committee and, you know, areas that they really didn't, they hadn't, they didn't have experienced before, but they just jumped in and did a great job. So, I'm super happy about it. We need more women in those positions, but I think it's a good start. You mentioned WRC 2027 because, of course, this whole thing is just one long process, really. We were talking as well last time about trying to at least shorten the length of the actual meetings and seeing if we could streamline it or look at different strands and that kind of thing. Yes. Has there been any progress on that? Have you heard anything about that? None at all. None at all. In fact, I think that it's worse than before because every band is encumbered and so no matter what you do, there's going to be, you know, interested parties, but I do think that the four weeks, it's very difficult for people to leave their day job because I think most of us, this is not the only part of our job, right? And so to leave your day job to come here, it's very tough and it would be really nice to have it be shortened. And I think that the real work gets done in the third week and then in the fourth week is where sort of the compromises come together. So maybe just have it two weeks. That's right. I don't think that had ever happened. You're the president, or you never know. You never know. And what are some of the outcomes that you hope will come from this World Road and Communication Conference? Well, one we already know, which is really good. That is the MSS, the two gigahertz MSS. So there's quite a few mobile satellite service, you know, agenda items for the future conference, so for 2027, that have gone through. And I think they went through sort of as a package and there's one for low data rate as well. And then there's another one, which is the looking at using MSS, mobile satellite service in the terrestrial bands. And that seems, there seems to be a lot of interest in that. That is something that for our company, we actually operate in the mobile satellite service. So we're not, that's not really something that we're really worried about, but we'll be interested to find out what happens on that. I think it's going to be a tough, tough, you know, four years for that area. And for OmniSpace, how do you see the future for OmniSpace? Well, I think it's really great. And, you know, just the fact that Global Star with Apple started to put what we've been talking about for a long time to putting the MSS, the mobile satellite service in a device. They're using it for emergency services now, but it basically lends credibility to the business plan that we have. And so, you know, we were applauding that, and that's what we're going to be, you know, a standardized system going forward, having, you know, ubiquitous. You won't know that you're actually using us, which is fine with us. We're happy to be the one behind the scenes. That's brilliant. Well, thank you so much, Mdell. It's been great catching up with you. Good to catch up with you too. I hope it's not another four years before we talk again. Yes. But we wish you all the very best, of course, with everything that you're pushing for and for OmniSpace. And as I say, hopefully we'll catch up again very soon. Yeah, I hope so too. Thanks so much. Thank you. 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