• INTELSAT III - to give 3 Ocean Region Coverage

1971 

• ITU-WARC for Space Telecommunications
• INTELSAT IV Launched
• INTERSPUTNIK - Soviet Union equivalent of INTELSAT formed

1976 

• MARISAT - First civil maritime communications satellite service started

1977 

• EUTELSAT - European regional satellite
• ITU-WARC for Space Telecommunications in the Satellite Service

1980 

• INTELSAT V launched - 3 axis stabilised satellite built by Ford Aerospace

1983 

• ECS (EUTELSAT 1) launched - built by European consortium supervised by ESA

1984 

• UK's UNISAT TV DBS satellite project abandoned

1989 

• INTELSAT VI - one of the last big "spinners" built by Hughes

1990 

• IRIDIUM, TRITIUM, ODYSSEY and GLOBALSTAR S-PCN projects proposed - CDMA designs more popular
• EUTELSAT II

1992 

• OLYMPUS finally launched - large European development satellite with Ka-band, DBTV and Ku-band SS/TDMA payloads - fails within 3 years

1993 

• INMARSAT II - 39 dBW EIRP global beam mobile satellite - built by Hughes/British Aerospace

1994 

• INTELSAT VIII launched - first INTELSAT satellite built to a contractor's design
• Hughes describe SPACEWAY design

1996 

• INMARSAT III launched - first of the multibeam mobile satellites (built by GE/Marconi)

1997 

• IRIDIUM launches first test satellites
• ITU-WRC'97

1999 

• AceS launch first of the L-band MSS Super-GSOs - built by Lockheed Martin
• Iridium Bankruptcy - the first major failure?

2000 

• Thuraya launch L-band MSS Super-GSO

2004 

• Teledesic network planned to start operation