Operators are permitted to participate in operator-to-operator discussions without the U.S. administration being present, under the following conditions:
- U.S. operators shall notify the U.S. administration of plans for operator-to-operator discussions prior to any meetings. Information provided must include the networks to be considered, names of the U.S. participants, names of the foreign participants, if available, date and location of planned meeting. The U.S. administration must approve discussion of networks to be addressed at operator-to-operator meetings.
- The U.S. administration will attend and participate in any coordination meetings where it believes an administration presence is appropriate or desirable. The U.S. administration will likely need to attend if foreign administrations will be present.
- Any agreements reached between operators should be referred to as operator “arrangements” rather than “coordination agreements”
- The U.S. operator shall provide the summary record and/or any operator arrangements for approval by the U.S. administration immediately following the meeting. No summary record shall be final until the U.S. administration has approved the record. All summary records and arrangements shall contain a clause stating the summary record is not final until approval has been received by the U.S. administrations.
- The U.S. administration shall be provided all information necessary to confirm information and agreements contained in the summary record.
- U.S. operators are not permitted to agree to move U.S. or foreign satellites or change orbital parameters (for NGSO systems) during the course of operator-to-operator discussions. Nor are they permitted to agree to technical changes that could adversely affect operation of another U.S. licensee or U.S. Government system (e.g. enlarging coverage area, band segmentation).
- US operators are also not permitted to coordinate future systems or modifications that have not been filed with both the FCC and the ITU. In other words, if a filing has been submitted to the ITU by the FCC, coordination discussions may begin after the filing is published “as received”, but with the understanding that the filing may need to be modified if the ITU has questions or concerns, and thus any preliminary agreements may need to be revisited. In no event, should coordination discussions include any technical data that are planned but unfiled
- An “arrangement” with one operator does not imply similar “arrangements” with all other operators requiring coordination.