An
investigation into the months-long intentional jamming of mobile satellite
communications provided by Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications of Abu Dhabi
concluded that the jamming came from Libya, one of Thuraya's shareholders,
according to officials familiar with the episode.
In perhaps
one of the most persistent jamming events ever recorded in the commercial
satellite sector, Libyan nationals operating from three widely separated
locations inside Libya--at least one of them a restricted military site--compromised
the L-band communications signals from Thuraya for more than six months in
2006, officials said.
The jamming
dealt a blow to Thuraya's 2006 revenues at a time when the company is trying to
expand into Asia and complete the launch of its third satellite.
Officials
said the jamming ceased only in late August 2006 after a diplomatic initiative
made by the government of the United Arab Emirates to the government of Libya.
"Once the
diplomatic channel was employed the problem was solved in a very short time,"
one official said. "Those doing the jamming were apparently concerned that
smugglers carrying Marlboro cigarettes or other contraband from Chad or Niger into Libya were using Thuraya satellite phones. They wanted to disrupt their
operations and thought this was a way to do it. I don't know whether they even
realized the effect this was having on the Thuraya signal way beyond the
borders of Libya."Thuraya officials have declined to comment on the problem
beyond saying they relied in part on technical assistance from the Thuraya
system's prime contractor, Boeing Satellite Systems International. Boeing
officials also have declined to discuss the matter, referring questions to
Thuraya. The Libyan embassy in Paris did not respond to requests for comment.
With the
growth of satellite communications, globally signal jamming like piracy --
hijacking a frequency to replace the intended programming with the hijackers'
message--has cropped up from time to time.
In Asia,
both APT Satellite Holdings Ltd. and AsiaSat of Hong Kong have suffered the
occasional TV-signal hijacking by groups believed to be in support of the Falun
Gong dissident group in China.
In France, operators of the French Syracuse military telecommunications system say their satellites'
signals in the Middle East have been subject to attempted jamming.
But in
these cases the signals were compromised for only short periods or overcome by
the satellites' onboard anti-jam systems in the case of the French Syracuse.
The head of
one satellite-fleet operator said that in Asia in particular, his company has
purposely offered narrow beams for certain markets to make it more difficult to
invade the signal.
Several
commercial satellite-fleet operators have said they are considering the
addition of nulling antennas or other onboard gear to provide at least some
protection to their satellite signals. But the cost of the added hardware
remains an issue.
Industry
officials said that once a signal is interrupted, it can take time to determine
whether the interference is intentional or the result of misuse of a
ground-based antenna by a novice operator.
This is
what happened with Thuraya. Industry officials said that because of Thuraya's
operations in the Middle East, and because Thuraya's owners include
government-owned telecommunications operations from most Arab and Muslim
governments in the region, the jamming was immediately assumed to be of U.S. or Israeli origin.
But as the
weeks passed and the jamming did not cease or change characteristics, Thuraya
was forced to maneuver its large satellite, located at 44 degrees east in
geostationary orbit, to try to isolate the location.
"What you
can do is turn the satellite slightly to see whether it changes the strength of
the jamming signal," said one official. "As you perform the maneuver, you watch
to see when the signal increases or decreases and this allows you to begin to
determine the geographic location of the problem."
Officials
said that once this was done, Thuraya deployed representatives to visit the
areas where the jamming antennas were thought to be, and found that at least
one of them was a Libyan military installation. "They were denied access to the
site and told to turn around," one industry official said. "It was later
determined that there were three sites performing the jamming operations, not
just a couple of guys acting on their own. Having a shareholder do this was
certainly not what we expected."