[posterkid]

The story I hear is that all the encrypted bandwidth is being sopped up by Afghani operations... simply no room left on the secure links for this data.

[thescourged1]

Telstar 11 is a dual C/Ku band satellite. What particular band is being used I couldn't say (I've been out of the sat biz for a couple years.), it will have 24 transponders (channels) on the C band side and 32+ on the Ku band side. Ku, having a higher bandwidth, is where digitally compressed signals are transmitted. Given that the capability of attaining dozens of channels with compression on a single transponder, I find it unlikely that it's a Ku feed. C band is a low-bandwidth, analog transmission, very likely to be unencrypted (especially if it's a Brazilian feed). Anyone with a old 7' dish can pick up those feeds. What I don't understand, is why they can't encrypt these signals. Hardware limitations my a$$.