Libya source of jamming of Lebanese news channels: TRA

23 February 2011

BEIRUT: The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority confirmed Tuesday that Libya has been jamming Lebanese news channels.

“It turned out that the jamming likely came from a Satellite News Gathering base present outside Lebanese territories, and specifically inside Libyan territories, especially as the area covered by network provider Arabsat stretches throughout vast areas in the Middle East, Gulf, Africa and Europe,” said a TRA statement.

Transmission of NBN, Al-Jadeed and Al-Manar were all disrupted over the weekend, when two leading network providers NileSat and Arabsat were hit by what has been described as a “sophisticated” blocking attack. Broadcasting of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera was also scrambled.

The statement said the TRA had reached this conclusion after its team and the technicians from the local airing base in Jouret al-Ballout attempted to examine last week’s source of jamming.

TRA said that in line with efforts made by the TRA and the Telecommunications Ministry to address the problem, the Arabsat administration was contacted and an agreement was made to secure another frequency for Lebanese channels, so they would operate via two frequencies.

TRA said it also worked on securing an alternative frequency for Lebanese channels on Nilesat, which was jammed Saturday night.

But given Nilesat’s refusal to provide a frequency for NBN, the TRA said it contacted the Arabsat administration and an agreement was reached by which NBN would be among the channels benefiting from Arabsat’s frequencies.

Relations between Lebanon and Libya have been cold since the prominent Shiite cleric Musa Sadr disappeared during a trip to Libya in 1978.

At least 300 people have been killed in Libya so far after bloody clashes broke out between security services and demonstrators. – The Daily Star