Islamabad: US Company Hughes, which has agreed to lease its six-year-old satellite HGS3 to Pakistan, would not provide any guarantees for shifting the satellite to the orbit desired by Pakistan.

No performance guarantees were being given by the US company Hughes for shifting the "defective" HGS3 satellite to 38 E orbital slot of Pakistan, Chairman of the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) Air Vice-Marshal Azhar Maud, was quoted by 'The Dawn'.

Maud told a media briefing on July 4 that the satellite, which has a "troubled history", was launched in 1996 for Indonesia and later on it developed a power pack problem.

It was subsequently leased to Turkey as Anatolia 1 but on termination of the lease, the ownership went back to Hughes.

Maud said that the power pack problem of the satellite was persistent and did not allow its batteries to provide energy to the payload during the eclipse period of 88 days on an average of three hours per day between 23:00 hours and 02:00 hours.

However, the payload of the satellite was fully functional and the availability of the satellite transponder was more than 96 per cent despite outages during the eclipse period.

"This problem has caused the cost of the satellite to come down significantly as similar satellites not having this kind of problem are available for about $ 50 million to $ 80 million," Maud said.

PTI