CASBAA Report 2008: India likely to face an outage in the next three years

India is among six other countries that are likely to face an outage in the next three years, says a transmission trouble report by the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA). The report also showcases the threat to television services posed by the deployment of broadband wireless access services (such as WiMax) in the radio frequency band used for the wholesale distribution of satellite television signals in Asia.

The report showcases a list of six high-risk markets where cable systems, hotels and other wholesale broadcast customers are likely to experience outages over the next three years – India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand. CASBAA however, judged Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Malaysia as ‘low risk’ markets because the regulatory authorities there have assigned other frequencies for broadband wireless deployments, in part mitigating widespread industry concerns.

“Given the central role that satellites play in the delivery of television services to hundreds of millions of pay-TV subscribers in Asian markets, the risk of regional broadcasts ‘going to black’ is unacceptable. This is no false alarm. In the report, we tabulate the rising incidence of interference in the ‘C-band’ used by satellite operators as recorded by repeated tests, extensive technical modeling, along with the growing numbers of ‘uncontrolled’ outages,” said an official from CASBAA.

According to the report, Pakistan and Australia have licensed systems in the C-band already, producing signal interference, whereas in India, there are significant pressures to allocate vital broadcast spectrum currently used by satellite operators. In Indonesia, while the government has drafted decrees to separate wireless and satellite transmissions carriers are reporting widespread on the ground interference. The report underlines the fact that governments across Asia do not need to sacrifice digital development goals to preserve satellite communications.