A year after winning a crucial battle against Wimax, the satellite industry is back at the barricades over spectrum interference.
A new report from CASBAA (Cable & Satellite Broadcast Industry Association) warns of "rising incidents" of interference in C-band transmission by Wimax networks in the region.
In a survey of Asian satellite deployments it has found that a "high risk" of "highly destructive interference" exists in Australia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and New Zealand.
"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 "Ëœgoing to black' is unacceptable," said CASBAA in a statement.
"This is no false alarm. In the report we tabulate the rising incidence of interference in the "ËœC-band' used by satellite operators as recorded by repeated tests, extensive technical modeling, along with the growing numbers of "Ëœuncontrolled' outages."
The survey comes 12 months after the World Radio Conference in Geneva voted to protect the C-band spectrum from terrestrial interference.
The decision had created a sense that "C-band satellite spectrum in Asia"&brkbar; will remain secure from interference. As you will see from our report, it is not," CASBAA said.
The unchecked growth of broadband wireless spectrum "puts at risk satellite industry and other investments running into the billions of dollars."
Regulators in the six "high-risk" countries have accepted the deployment of Wimax in the extended C-band - 3.4 Ghz to 3.7 GHz, the report notes.
Pakistan and Australia have licensed systems in the C-band already producing signal interference. 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.
Andrew Jordan, CEO of SAT-GE, told a session at the CASBAA convention in Hong Kong on Wednesday that while a global victory had been won, the battle was now being fought at the country level.
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