Advanced Television

Russian satellite fail hits millions

July 8, 2013

By Chris Forrester

Russia’s Express-MD1 satellite was lost a week ago and has badly affected TV broadcasting across the country. Some 117 million viewers have been hit by the loss. Engineers say it will take at least 10 days for a full service to be resumed, with Russia’s European viewers and the Ural regions were still affected as at July 6th.

Russia’s two most-watched channels Rossia-1 and Channel One were resumed on other satellites within about an hour, but Russia’s Ministry of Communications & Mass Media says that the state-backed Culture Channel and Fifth Channel were still disrupted.

The good news is that new broadcasting capacity should see full services restored within the next week or so, but a small number of homes (said to be about 2 per cent) might not get the channels back for three months or more. These homes will need to see new or re-positioned antennas fixed

Categories: Articles, DTH/Satellite