Chris Forrester of Advanced TV and Satnews.com Senior Contributor.

Chris Forrester, with Advanced Television and a Senior Contributor for Satnews Publishers, is reporting that Intelsat’s share price is riding high (at about $22 per share), helped by optimism over a financial windfall flowing from the restructuring of some of the company's C-band capacity over the U.S. — however, Intelsat says the firm has no intention of extending the C-band policy to their Asian markets.

The operator’s C-band proposals for the U.S. (made in a consortium with SES) provoked a strong condemnation from other Asian satellite operators, fearful that the reallocation of capacity in favor of 5G might spread to other parts of the world.

Terry Bleakley, Intelsat’s Regional VP for APAC, as reported by SpaceTech Asia, stated that Intelsat’s proposals are for the U.S. alone. Bleakley stated that Intelsat has 11 satellites operating over the APAC region — ten of them carry C-band transponders. He admitted that many of Intelsat's customers wholly depend on C-band because of its superior rain fade abilities.

He added that the U.S. is a near-unique market and one that Intelsat covers from coast to coast and has but a single regulatory body (the FCC, which is now studying the Intelsat+SES proposals). Bleakley stressed that these conditions do not apply in the APAC region. Moreover, the APAC region is “notoriously complicated” with dozens of governments, structures and regulations, which made it near-impossible to act on a pan-regional basis.