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Indiantelevision.com's Digital Edge

Broadband wireless interference with TV broadcasts a growing concern

Indiantelevision.com Team

(5 September 2008 1:30 pm)

MUMBAI: The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (Casbaa), which will be meeting in Hong Kong from 28-30 October, has shown major concern over increasing reports of critical interference with TV broadcasts by broadband wireless systems in the satellite C-band frequency.

According to Casbaa and other professional bodies, the implications of disrupted C-band distribution of TV signals are massive since C-band transmissions reach not only individual homes, but also deliver wholesale television to cable systems serving hundreds of millions of customers.

The move comes in the wake of recent reports from Bahrain in the Middle East, where many consumers find their service cut off as wireless operators' power up newly-licensed Wimax systems. The consumers are largely expatriate watching Indian-originated satellite TV via large C-band receiver dishes.

Bahrain ignored repeated protests from broadcasters and satellite service suppliers at last year's ITU World Radio Conference, who forecast that unrestricted Wimax systems operating in C-band would result in millions of disaffected consumers.

Bahraini officials admitted that the domestic TV signals had been disrupted because local telecom operators are broadcasting broadband wireless Internet services over the same frequency as TV channels.

For more than two years, the global satellite industry has urged regulators to license alternative frequencies to C-band for Wimax, particularly recommending the lower-frequency and more efficient "S-band".

While many Asian countries heeded the warnings, others, including Pakistan, Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Fiji, have licensed inappropriate frequencies, and interference reports are rising sharply as licensed and unlicensed telecom operators fire-up Wimax systems.

"Bahrain and other markets such as Pakistan, where broadcasts have been disrupted by unrestricted Wimax deployment, are the equivalent of the 'canary down the mine shaft'," said Casbaa CEO Simon Twiston Davies. "This is already a big problem and will grow much larger unless industry and consumers can make their voices heard."

"Action needs to be taken now, when licensing is still at an early stage and the situation can be saved. By the time the consumers lose their TV signals, it's too late," Davies added.

"Few satellite dishes in Asia are directly licensed," said Casbaa's deputy CEO John Medeiros. "The fact is that the regulating agencies take insufficient account of the consumers served by large domestic dishes and the need for technically perfect reception by cable operators."