Satellite Providers Wage Interference War

Satellite service providers have launched a series of initiatives to combat the service interference they say is worse than ever before.

“The satellite business is, in effect, the victim of its own success,” said Global VSAT Forum’s David Hartshorn, citing the exponential growth of the business over the last 15 years. “All this means that the math has changed, the business plans have changed and the amount of money available to conduct training for those providing installation is in freefall.”

Hartshorn’s comments on Wednesday were part of a panel on satellite interference he moderated at the Content and Communications World conference in New York.

More than ever, satellite services suffer interference from human error, the inability to track systems that aren’t performing and “intentional jamming” by unfriendly governments that don’t want particular content to reach their populations, he said. The wireless industry’s push to get satellite’s spectrum also is interrupting service, he added.

Industry advocates, however, launched initiatives to remedy such issues, using both commercial and government channels.

One of the initiatives being championed is establishing an industrywide carrier ID system “that allows us as satellite operators to read the data and get to the source of a problem faster,” said Mark Rawlins, head of payload engineering and operations for the European satellite service provider Eutelsat, which put such a system in place before the London Olympics.

“We know it’s not going to solve everything, but in most cases it allows us to get to the source of the problem faster,” he said. “If we can’t find a source of interference, we can find out where the signal is coming from.”

Roger Franklin, president-CEO of Crystal Solutions, said his company has also developed training and certification programs for technicians, since human error is the No. 1 cause of interference, he said.  Technician error has accounted for 60% of service problems this year so far.

There are now basic and advanced certification programs for technicians, as well as special courses for particular service providers.

Satellite providers also are trying to combat “intentional jamming,” particularly by Syria and Iraq, that in October rose to account for 18% of interference versus 10% for the year up to that time.

Rawlins said industry leaders have mobilized the U.S, British, French and German governments, as well as others, to remedy the situation.  Although last month’s surge has subsided, the industry has few tools to fight jamming and are therefore looking to the governments for help, he said.

“The difference between the other types of interference and jamming is that jamming has a specific objected. It looks for the services it doesn’t want its population to see,” Rawlins said.