The recent Thailand anti-government protests have led to a spate of satellite jamming on the Thaicom satellite. Some channels, especially the pro-government Bluesky TV, to be badly affected.

Thaicom says that the interference was made by a mobile upload unit, which attacked the transponder hosting the Bluesky channel both on Thaicom-5 and Thaicom-6 satellites.

The nation’s National Broadcasting & Telecoms Commission regulator has asked Thaicom to provide a second feed of the channel in case of further interference issues. Bluesky has been running a message on its current channel to tell its viewers how to switch to the backup channel when interference occurs, said Thakorn Tanthasit, NBTC’s secretary general.

Bluesky has filed a formal complaint with the NBTC of occasional interference with its broadcast since late November. The interference intensified on December 5th then stopped before starting again on December 9th, and again recently.

Thaicom has also denied that it has been the source of the signal jamming, saying that such an action would damage its reputation and business.

Meanwhile, the NBTC has demanded that the 16 operators of mobile uplink units to report the whereabouts of their trucks during the periods when the jamming was taking place.

Categories: Articles, DTH/Satellite