FTA meaning Free to Air, are the radio signals that are not encrypted signals. Anybody with a receiver can readily receive the FTA signals and view the content. The FTA doesn’t incur any charges at the viewer or the user end. But for broadcasting FTA signals there are some charges levied on the broadcasting station. Radio and Television are the broadcasting Medias who uses FTA space for their broadcasting.FTA does not require the receivers or the viewers to subscribe to any providers. They simply need to have a receiver antenna or a dish.

FTA can be ground based transmission or Satellite based transmission.

• Ground based FTA: The Ground based FTA would have a broadcasting station sending the radio signals out in the air at a specific frequency for each of their channel or program. Any user with a proper receiver of these radio signals, receivers are mostly the antennas or dishes, could view or listed to these radio signals.
  Ground based FTA requires clear line of path to reach longer distance viewers.
• Satellite FTA: The Satellite FTA would have a Satellite provider hub station who receives the radio signals from the program or channel owners. They send these signals to the FTA satellites orbiting around the earth. These satellites use specific range of frequency called the ‘C-Band’. The satellite sends back these non-encrypted signals to the earth’s atmosphere. FTA satellite uses C band with 4 to 8 GHz frequency to send or receive the radio signals.

Anyone with a proper dish receiver could view the programs relayed in their TV boxes or listen to the music programs in their radio boxes. Only limited channels could be provided with the help of the C band via the satellite. But the C band frequency could not be disturbed by natural calamities.

The group of distributing companies tried to file a law suit against the FTA concept of receive free programs. So that their business would not be affected as it will end up making everyone subscribe to their companies for receiving the TV programs and radio programs.
But the request was discerned and rejected because of the ‘open skies’ policy. Open skies policy states that If we can accept that someone has right to use the atmosphere and broadcast their signals, then we should also accept that anyone can receive such broadcasted signals for free.

FTA programs will have lot of commercial breaks in order to support their broadcasting charges. But some users accept to view or listen to such interrupted programs because ‘it is just free’

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