2010年1月9日土曜日

France Seeks ITU Help To Halt Satellite Signal Jamming by Iran

01/8/10 05:34 PM ET

France Seeks ITU Help To Halt Satellite Signal Jamming by Iran


By Peter B. de Selding

PARIS — French regulators have asked the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to intervene with the Iranian government to persuade Tehran to stop jamming satellite signals from the BBC World Service’s Persian-language broadcasts into Iran, according to the director of France’s National Frequencies Agency (ANF).

ANF Director Francois Rancy said the appeal to the ITU was made the first week of January only after numerous French requests to Iran to stop the interference went unanswered over the past seven months.

Rancy, a veteran international-frequency regulator who chaired the ITU’s World Radiocommunication Conference in late 2007, said that while he hoped ITU pressure would affect Iran’s behavior, he was not counting on an immediate stop to the practice.

“The ITU is really a gentlemen’s club,” Rancy said in a Jan. 5 interview. “It depends on the goodwill of its members. There is no mechanism for forcing an administration into compliance with the rules.”

The Geneva-based ITU is a United Nations affiliate that regulates satellite and other wireless communications frequencies and satellite orbital slots. In recent years it has regularly tried, without success, to get the U.S. government to stop jamming legal radio and television broadcasts from Cuba, which the ITU says is done with low-flying aircraft operating in international airspace.

In another example, Slovenian television broadcasters and the ITU have sought to stop Italian broadcasters from overstepping their frequency assignments with signal transmissions that interfere with Slovenian broadcasts. According to ITU documents, Slovenian regulators sent more than 200 reports to Italy citing interference, saying Italy was using frequencies that had not been coordinated with its neighbors.

In both these cases, the alleged offending administrations — the United States and Italy — have all but refused to acknowledge the ITU requests.

The BBC Persian programming carried on the Eutelsat Hot Bird 6 satellite stationed at 13 degrees east was jammed starting last spring during Iran’s elections, and it has continued intermittently ever since, particularly during the broadcaster’s coverage of the death of a reformist Iranian cleric.

An official with Paris-based Eutelsat acknowledged that locating the source of frequency interference is often difficult. But in this case, Eutelsat contacted other satellite operators to compare notes about broadcasts in the region and performed tests over an extended period of time, and concluded that the jamming signals were coming from Iranian territory.

The Eutelsat official said one way of determining whether interference is intentional or accidental is to move the affected programming to another transponder on the satellite to see whether the jamming then stops.

Once it is determined beyond a reasonable doubt that the interference was coming from Iran, Eutelsat contacted ANF, which then contacted Iran in multiple letters sent since mid-2009, Rancy said.

For the BBC, a solution to the problem is likely to involve using replacement capacity on Eutelsat satellites whose beams make it impossible for Iranian authorities to uplink interference to the satellite. The BBC in recent months has shifted its programming to Eutelsat capacity on the Telstar 12 satellite at 15 degrees west, a location that relieves the jamming but also makes it difficult for the BBC’s Iranian audience to capture the satellite’s downlink.

The British broadcaster has also used Eutelsat’s W2M satellite at 3.1 degrees west, which offers a better signal-reception angle for Iranian dish antennas but features a narrow beam whose uplink cannot be accessed from Iranian soil, the Eutelsat official said.

“There are no easy and definitive solutions,” the Eutelsat official said. “But when we can, we can move programming to a satellite whose location makes it impossible for jammers in a given location to target the satellite.”

BBC World Service did not respond to requests for comment about whether the use of other satellites will provide a permanent solution to the problem or whether the broadcast audience will be sharply reduced as viewers need to repoint their rooftop antennas to the new satellites.

In a Dec. 21 statement following a fresh round of Hot Bird 6 jamming that started Dec. 20, the broadcaster said: “The BBC is looking at ways to increase the options for its Farsi-speaking audiences in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, which may include broadcasting on other satellites.”

2010年1月3日日曜日

Broadcasting Board of Governors' Statement on Interference with Broadcasts to Iran

Press Release

Broadcasting Board of Governors' Statement on Interference with Broadcasts to Iran

December 29, 2009 | Washington, DC« Back to Press Releases

The Broadcasting Board of Governors condemns the latest efforts of the Iranian Government and its associates to interfere and censor the free flow of objective news and information to the Iranian people. By monitoring satellite signals, BBG's technical experts have determined that on December 27, the Government of Iran engaged in the intentional jamming of satellite transmissions of the Voice of America's (VOA) Persian News Network and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's (RFE/RL) Radio Farda.

These efforts continue a pattern by the Iranian Government to block the broadcasting of objective and balanced news and information to the Iranian people, efforts which the Government of Iran has amplified since the June 12 Iranian elections. As Iranian citizens once again demonstrate against the current government, Iran has stepped up its measures to ensure that the Iranian people are deprived of the international reaction, as well as of accurate news about the protests taking place in various cities in Iran.

The latest actions of the Iranian government in jamming commercial satellites appear calculated to intimidate the commercial satellite providers that are targets of the jamming into complicity with the actions of the Government of Iran and deprive the Iranian people access to free press and information.

"Private industry is an essential partner in freedom of the press. We urge our satellite partners to stand united in the face of these authoritarian acts or risk even greater human rights losses," BBG Governor D. Jeffrey Hirschberg said after the Iranian Government's latest efforts to jam U.S. International Broadcasting signals.

"This type of intentional, harmful interference is not only a violation of the rules of the International Telecommunications Union to which the Government of Iran has subscribed, but is also a flagrant violation of the internationally recognized right of the people of Iran to receive news and information without government censorship."

Calls to the Iranian Mission to the UN for comment have not been returned.

The BBG condemns censorship in any form and vigorously affirms the right of all peoples of the world to receive news and information freely and without restriction. The BBG also strongly urges satellite owners and service providers not to allow themselves to become unwitting instruments of censorship of the free press under the guise of avoiding harmful interference. The people of Iran, like the peoples of all countries, have the right to know about their country and the world.

Deutsche Welle latest target of Iranian jamming

Deutsche Welle latest target of Iranian jamming

Following deliberate interference to Farsi broadcasts of the BBC, VOA and Radio Farda, Deutsche Welle (DW) is the latest international broadcaster to report deliberate jamming of its satellite signal in Iran, according to a report in news magazine Der Spiegel.

The report says that the French national radio regulatory agency Agence Nationale des Fréquences wrote to the Iranian Ministry of Communication saying that on December 7 and December 8 signals had been detected that looked like “deliberate interference” with the satellite used by DW.

The affected satellite was a Hotbird satellite belonging to Eutelsat. The satellite operator apparently reacted to the disturbance by increasing the broadcasting power, whereupon the disturbance signal was also strengthened, cutting out an Arabic language TV broadcast from DW.

The origin of the disturbance was traced to the area of Tehran. Similar disturbances coming from Iran were already detected by the French authority in May and June 2009.

(Source: The Local)

Iran jamming satellite signals from U.S. and British broadcasts

Iran jamming satellite signals from U.S. and British broadcasts

By Steven Zyan Kain Nickels.
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Dec 31, 2009 by Steven Zyan Kain Nickels - 23 votes, no comments
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deltamike
A satellite dish garden in Salt Lake City
British and U.S. broadcasters say that Iran is jamming signals from a key communications satellite in an effort to keep news of opposition demonstrations from most Iranians.
U.S. and British broadcasters say that Iran is jamming signals from an international satellite that transmits signals into Iran from the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC's) Persian television service and the United States' Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts. The VOA is reporting that the jamming effort is affecting a satellite system known as "Hot Bird," and is blocking the transmission of broadcasts of the VOA's Persian Network and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty's Radio Farda and Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language radio broadcast. Technicians believe the VOA broadcasts have been affected since December 27. The BBC's Persian television service first noticed "persistent interference" on December 20, according to a Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) report. That was soon after the BBC network began extended coverage of the death of the reformist cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri. The jamming efforts affected other channels on the satellite transponder as well, including R1 and Yes Italia. The jamming resulted in the signal being unwatchable due to "picture break-ups and sound drop-outs," according to RNW. To combat the jamming interference, RNW says the BBC began using an info card telling viewers to turn to Telstar 12 during the jamming. The BBC reports that now the jamming has appeared to have stopped for their broadcasts but they are looking at other satellites as a way to increase their broadcasts to Farsi-speaking Iranians. RNW said a statement issued by the U.S. government's Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) criticized the jamming and said,
As Iranian citizens once again demonstrate against the current government, Iran has stepped up its measures to ensure that the Iranian people are deprived of the international reaction, as well as of accurate news about the protests taking place in various cities in Iran.
It is widely accepted that Iran has the technical proficiency to disrupt a wide-range of communication networks, including broadcast, cell phone, satellite and Internet services within Iran.