The international news broadcasters are the most widely distributed group in our list: 30 services across 15 carriers. Almost none of them shares a carrier with another.
That is the opposite of how a network like a state broadcaster or a pay platform is carried, and the reason is straightforward. These are individual channels buying individual slots from whichever operator has capacity, rather than a single organisation leasing a whole transponder. Each one lands wherever there was room.
Several of these appear twice
Scan the frequency column and you will find some broadcasters listed more than once, on different carriers — sometimes an Arabic and an English service, sometimes an HD and an SD copy, sometimes the same service placed on two carriers.
That redundancy is genuinely useful and it is worth keeping rather than tidying away. Two copies on different carriers means two independent chances of reception. Carriers do not all fail together: they have different symbol rates, different FEC ratios, different polarisations, and in some cases sit in different LNB bands. A condition that breaks one may leave the other perfectly watchable.
For news specifically, that matters more than for most content. The value is in being able to see it now.
Service by service
Sorted by frequency. Where a broadcaster appears more than once, the copies are on separate carriers and behave independently.
| Channel | Frequency (MHz) | Polarisation | Symbol rate | FEC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNBC ARABIYA | 11137 | V | 27500 | 3/4 |
| CNN | 11137 | V | 27500 | 3/4 |
| Sky News HD | 11727 | H | 30000 | 3/4 |
| Al Arabiya | 11747 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| Al-Arabiya Alhadath | 11747 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| BBC News TV | 11766 | H | 27500 | 5/6 |
| MBN Alhurra HD | 11823 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| VOA IRAQ | 11823 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| BBC (A) | 11842 | H | 27500 | 5/6 |
| BBC (E) | 11842 | H | 27500 | 5/6 |
| BBC Horn of Africa | 11842 | H | 27500 | 5/6 |
| ANC | 11881 | H | 30000 | 3/4 |
| Bloomberg | 11881 | H | 30000 | 3/4 |
| CNBC Europe | 11881 | H | 30000 | 3/4 |
| AlAraby2 | 11938 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| Press TV HD | 11938 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| RT ARABIC HD | 11957 | H | 27500 | 5/6 |
| RT English | 11957 | H | 27500 | 5/6 |
| France 24 Eng | 11977 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| NHK World Japan | 11977 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| Sky News Arabia | 11977 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| Sky News Arabia HD | 11977 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| CGTN | 12015 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| CGTN-Arabic | 12015 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| Al Araby 2 HD | 12035 | H | 27500 | 5/6 |
| RT ARABIC SD | 12035 | H | 27500 | 5/6 |
| CNN HD | 12072 | H | 30000 | 3/4 |
| BBC Arabic | 12207 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| France 24 | 12207 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
| BBC (E) | 12729 | V | 27500 | 5/6 |
Why this group is a good diagnostic set
Because these services are spread across so many carriers, with such a mix of configurations, the pattern of which ones work tells you a lot about an installation:
- Only the low-band entries missing: oscillator or 22 kHz tone. Nothing to do with the dish.
- Only the horizontal entries missing: the LNB is not reaching 18 V. A cable or switch problem.
- Only the wider 30000 carriers missing: symbol rate on a manual scan, or a tuner that steps past them on a blind scan.
- Roughly half missing at random: genuine margin. Look at dish size, aim and cable rather than at settings.
Working through this group deliberately is a faster route to a diagnosis than testing one channel repeatedly, because the failures sort themselves into categories.
Free-to-air is not guaranteed
Many international news services are broadcast in the clear, which is why this group is often the first thing a new install finds. Not all of them are, and the arrangement can change.
A confident lock with a good quality reading and no picture means the carrier arrived intact and the service is encrypted. That is not a reception fault and there is nothing in the installation to correct.
