The commission set a late-August deadline for comments on a petition from an ICO Global Communications Ltd. subsidiary seeking a rule making to establish eligibility requirements for 2 GHz MSS carriers. "ICO takes this step because although the [International Telecommunication Union] World Administrative Radio Conference allocated spectrum to MSS in 1992, the [FCC] in mid-1998 does not appear close to authorizing qualified 2 GHz MSS systems to compete with previously licensed MSS systems offering similar service in the U.S. market," the petition said. The preliminary prospectus for London-based ICO Global's initial public offering, which sold July 31, said, "Successful implementation of the ICO system will require access to the 2 GHz band for service links (between) the ICO phone (and) the ICO satellite." ICO expects to launch the first of 12 satellites in December for its proposed $4.6 billion medium-earth-orbit system.