BBC Russia wants to expand, but faces challenges
The BBC announced proposals to “invest†in BBC World Service. This includes a desire for a "bigger digital presence" in Russian through a new digital service. But BBC satellite TV for Russia is problematic. Very few Russians have rotatable satellite dishes. About 25% of Russian homes have fixed Ku-band satellite dishes to receive direct-to-home services such as TricolorTV and NTV+. Western news channels are not included and are legally not welcome.
So far, Russia has not blocked the Internet content of Western international broadcasters, at least not on a continuous basis. Recent press accounts indicate that Russian authorities may even try to ban anonymizers and other methods used to work around online censorship. Circumvention would become more difficult. In an extreme scenario, Russia could physically cut off the landlines of Internet traffic into the country. Then no circumvention would be possible.
This could bring BBC Russia back to the venerable but unfashionable medium of shortwave radio. Shortwave is no longer used for domestic broadcasting in Russia and BBC Russian eliminated its shortwave broadcasts in 2011. But, if need be, Russians could dust off their Cold War era shortwave radios or purchase inexpensive Chinese-made portable radios. In addition to voice broadcasts, text, images, and even formatted web pages can be broadcast and received by any shortwave radio connected to a PC or mobile device running appropriate software. This has been demonstrated in VOA Radiogram experiments.
If Russia blocks Internet content from abroad, it may try to jam shortwave radio content from abroad, too, but most jamming transmitters of the Cold War era have been dismantled or have fallen into disrepair. Many of the jamming transmitters are outside of Russia, in former Soviet republics. Reviving a shortwave jamming apparatus would be a much more expensive proposition than blocking Internet content. Various Cold War anti-jamming tactics, using various tricks of ionospheric propagation, can be employed. Text via shortwave would be even more resistant to jamming than voice broadcasts.
So far, Russia has not blocked the Internet content of Western international broadcasters, at least not on a continuous basis. Recent press accounts indicate that Russian authorities may even try to ban anonymizers and other methods used to work around online censorship. Circumvention would become more difficult. In an extreme scenario, Russia could physically cut off the landlines of Internet traffic into the country. Then no circumvention would be possible.
This could bring BBC Russia back to the venerable but unfashionable medium of shortwave radio. Shortwave is no longer used for domestic broadcasting in Russia and BBC Russian eliminated its shortwave broadcasts in 2011. But, if need be, Russians could dust off their Cold War era shortwave radios or purchase inexpensive Chinese-made portable radios. In addition to voice broadcasts, text, images, and even formatted web pages can be broadcast and received by any shortwave radio connected to a PC or mobile device running appropriate software. This has been demonstrated in VOA Radiogram experiments.
If Russia blocks Internet content from abroad, it may try to jam shortwave radio content from abroad, too, but most jamming transmitters of the Cold War era have been dismantled or have fallen into disrepair. Many of the jamming transmitters are outside of Russia, in former Soviet republics. Reviving a shortwave jamming apparatus would be a much more expensive proposition than blocking Internet content. Various Cold War anti-jamming tactics, using various tricks of ionospheric propagation, can be employed. Text via shortwave would be even more resistant to jamming than voice broadcasts.