BBC to reduced satellite transponders from seven to six

[silverfox0786]

In an attempt to help reduce costs after having the licence fee freeze for a number of years, the BBC have decided to reduce the number of satellite transponders used by the BBC will be reduced to six.

This means that two underutilised “red button” video streams will be closed / switched off at the start of October 2011.

And that a number of channels, like BBC News, BBC Parliament, and BBC Alba, will be moving frequencies.


The following channels will be moved from Astra 2A, where there are currently to:

BBC News will move to Astra 2D, transponder 47 (10.80275 GHz horizontal)
BBC Parliament will move to Astra 2D, transponder 46 (10.78800 GHz Vertical)
BBC ALBA will move to Astra 2D, transponder 48 (10.81750 GHz vertical)

Once these channels have completed their move, the “BBC Red Button Sports Stream” will move to transponder 13 (11.95350 GHz horizontal).

Freesat and Sky box users will not notice any difference and your boxes will automatically update. Users of “Generic” or “free to air” receivers will need to perform a rescan of the channels.

This move should not cause any issues for UK BBC TV users.
However, it will have an impact on expats, who use the BBC News TV service to access the BBC Sports Red Button streams on Sky digiboxes. Currently as both BBC News and the BBC Sports Red Button streams are on an “expat friendly” frequency, and they can be receive on “small” satellite dishes. After the move, BBC News will only be available on larger satellite dishes, and so expat Sky box users may no longer be able to access BBC News channel, and so are unable to launch the BBC Sports Red Button stream application. A “Generic” or “free to air” receiver, that does not need access to BBC News, will still be able to receive these streams directly.

Well, at least for the time being.

[Conaxthewarrior]

Thanks for this update, as an ex-pat myself such news saves a lot of system checking.