Multichoice Checks Interruption in Reception with New Bands

Multichoice, a strong player in direct-to-home digital broadcasting in Nigeria in its bid to address complaints of interruption in reception during heavy rainfall, has moved from the W4 band to W7 band with higher power to address rainfall, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered.
All satellite systems operating above 10 GHz, are subject to attenuation of their signals by rain. Rainfall absorbs some of the signal power transmitted by the satellite.
For a small percentage of the time, the rainfall may be so heavy in a particular geographical area that the remaining power is not sufficient for reception of the signal. The amount of rain-induced attenuation can be predicted, and the system is usually designed to work for the highest percentage of the time that is economically practical.
John Ugbe, managing director, Multichoice said the company has put together a quality control team to address the issue.
He said the duty of the team is to go about checking installations of decoders and making sure installations were properly done as this is one of the major causes of rainfail.
Ugbe said any system that works on the C-band or KU- band is prone to rainfail but that with the company’s movement from W4 to W7 which has higher powers, there will be less rainfail.
The amount of rain-induced attenuation can be predicted, and the system is usually designed to work for the highest percentage of the time that is economically practical. The combination of satellite power and receive-dish antenna size is chosen to enable reception for all but the heaviest rainfall periods of the year at any particular location.
Expected outage due to rainfail can also be further reduced on the subscriber side by the purchase of a slightly larger dish antenna.