| FTA Satellite Receiver

FTA Satellite Receiver

A Fee-to-air (FTA) receiver is also known as a FTA satellite receiver. These types of satellite receivers, are designed to pick up the unencrypted signals transmitted by television and radio broadcasters.

A FTA satellite receiver is not designed to receive the standard over the air transmissions which are normally picked up by a standard outside antenna.

Although FTA channels are usually described as free. Some people contend that the viewers are, in fact, paying for the FTA transmissions though station licensing fees, or in the case of PBS, through donations.

In the United States and most of North America there are a number of sources of FTA transmissions:

Globecast World TV transmits ethnic-language broadcasts
Glorystar and Spiritcast both transmit Christian broadcasts
There are various local markets that transmit in both English and Spanish language.
PBS transmits its' signal via FTA.
NASA has multiple channels of FTA broadcasts.

Ethnic language communities are the largest users of FTA receivers. This is because the Multilingual American Communities and the broadcasters they are affiliated with often transmit FTA transmissions in multiple languages.

Many American broadcasts are sent to multiple channels in many languages. This helps them get more broad spread support for there programming which, in turn, leads to more demand for their programming from the cable networks.