Satellite Radio

Satellite Radio Broadcasting
Equal Access uses the Digital Satellite Radio infrastructure to directly reach the participating communities in rural Nepal. Digital Satellite Radio (DSR) has many advantages as a tool to provide education to underserved rural communities.

• The satellite provides a crystal clear signal across a huge geographic area, providing equal service to rural and urban areas (a single beam of the satellite covers all of India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka),
• The equipment required to receive the signal is relatively cheap and manufactured in the region (by BPL, Bangalore, India), requires little power supply (we use a mix of solar and battery power at rural sites) and strongly resembles a regular radio allowing communities to quickly understand and operate the system,
• The DSR Receivers are simple to use and we have found that only a basic technical training is required for communities to use the systems,
• The satellite system primarily carries audio content, a medium for education that builds on the established oral traditions of rural communities and which overcomes illiteracy, and
• As the receivers are also digital, they can be connected to a computer and used to download any form of data/multimedia such as WebPages, a written syllabus or an electronic text book at up to 64kbps.

Satellite Radio
A satellite radio or subscription radio (SR) is a digital radio signal that is broadcast by a communications satellite, which covers a much wider geographical range than terrestrial radio signals.


Satellite radio is currently at the forefront of the evolution of radio services in some countries, notably the United States. Mobile services, such as Sirius, XM, and Worldspace, allow listeners to roam across an entire continent, listening to the same audio programming anywhere they go. Other services, such as Music Choice or Muzak's satellite-delivered content, require a fixed-location receiver and a dish antenna. In all cases, the antenna must have a clear view to the satellites. In areas where tall buildings, bridges, or even parking garages obscure the signal, repeaters can be placed to make the signal available to listeners.

Radio services are usually provided by commercial ventures and are subscription-based. The various services are proprietary signals, requiring specialized hardware for decoding and playback. Providers usually carry a variety of news, weather, sports, and music channels, with the music channels generally being commercial-free.

In areas with a relatively high population density, it is easier and less expensive to reach the bulk of the population with terrestrial broadcasts. Thus in the UK and some other countries, the contemporary evolution of radio services is focused on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) services, such as HD Radio, rather than satellite radio.

WorldSpace Satellite Radio
WorldSpace is a digital satellite radio network based in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. It covers most of Asia and parts of Africa by satellite. The company is also licensed to serve South America and Central America, but services for those regions have not started yet. (The company's website does not include any mention of plans for services to these regions to start.) In the United States, some WorldSpace channels, such as "The System" and "U-Pop" are carried on XM Satellite Radio. Major content partners include BBC, NPR, CNN, Virgin Radio, Fox News and Bloomberg. Many channels are free of advertising, and they are known for high quality programs with "near CD quality" audio.

WorldSpace Satellite Radio Receivers
JVC, Sanyo, Hitachi, and Panasonic are manufacturers selling WorldSpace digital satellite radios in the past. South Korea's AMI, India's BPL and Xi'an's Tongshi are the current manufacturers. A consumer's radio consists of a satellite receiver plus an antenna that has to be placed in clear view of the relevant satellite (so-called "line of sight"), oriented in a certain azimuth and elevation (depending upon the geographic location). Most of the channels are available only by subscription, but a few are free: the BBC's African channels and RFI, for example.