After an unsuccessful launch on Saturday, when the AMC-14 satellite failed to reach its orbit due to an anomaly of the Proton Breeze M rocket, Inmarsat announced that it will suspend its plans to ship the third Inmarsat-4F3 satellite to the launch site and said it expected the launch to be back on line in April this year.

The announcement was made due to fears that the same thing might happen this time. Inmarsat said that the launch was postponed for late April “pending an investigation of the launch failure by the International Launch Services and the Russian State Commission,” the company said in a statement.

Although the launch of the AMC-14 satellite, belonging to SES Americom, failed to reach its pre-established orbit, the satellite is said to have reached a lower but stable orbit, and remained perfectly functional. AMC-14 is an advanced Ku-band BSS satellite optimized for Direct-to-Home video services.

The mobile satellite communications service provider Inmarsat is concerned about the Proton rocket considering it already failed three times in the past three years. The launch of the Inmarsat 4-F3 satellite is meant to offer global coverage with its BGAN broadband service.

The Inmarsat-4 satellites are among the most sophisticated commercial communication satellites ever built, the company said, adding that the F3 in particular will “provide incremental opportunities for growth in (the) marine and aeronautical markets.”

The first of the Inmarsat-4 series was launched in March 2005 and currently orbits above the Indian Ocean, while the second one was launched in November 2005 and cover the Americas.

According to the agreement with International Launch Services (ILS), the satellite was supposed to be launched in March this year from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Inmarsat had also thought about another possibility of launching the satellite, from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2009, but for now, they will be waiting for the Proton investigation to end before making a decision.