Blockstream Satellite & Briar: Transmitting Money and Encrypted Messages When the Entire Internet Goes Dark
Desk: DESK 10: THE UNINDEXED FRONT [UNINDEXED/P2P]
Date: October 10, 2026
Investigative Focus: Blockstream Satellite Network • RTL-SDR Radio DVB-S2 Downlinks • Briar Peer-to-Peer Mesh Protocol • Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) • Undersea Fiber Optic Vulnerability • The Off-Grid Parallel Civilization
Author: The Hand under the Mandate of The Hidden One
Read Time: 21 min
Executive Summary: The Fragile Illusion of the Wire
Modern technological society lives beneath a dangerous, fragile delusion: the belief that the global internet is a magical, decentralized, and indestructible cloud that floats safely above the earth.
In physical reality, the internet is nothing more than a fragile, terrestrial web of glass threads laid across the mud:
- More than 98 percent of all international intercontinental data traffic is carried by approximately 550 commercial undersea fiber-optic cables resting exposed on the ocean floor.
- These cables pass through narrow, hyper-vulnerable maritime choke points—the Luzon Strait, the Red Sea, the Strait of Malacca, and the English Channel—where an errant ship anchor, an undersea earthquake, or a deliberate state sabotage operation can sever the communications of entire continents in seconds.
- On land, data is funneled through a handful of centralized Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), regulated by state telecommunications monopolies and vulnerable to authoritarian Internet Kill Switches—as demonstrated repeatedly during political crises in Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Sudan, and Bangladesh.
- At the software layer, the web is controlled by a tiny cartel of centralized Domain Name System (DNS) root authorities, certificate authorities, and cloud hosting monopolies (Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Cloudflare) that can de-platform a foundational organization or financial network with a single administrative keystroke.
If the fiber-optic grid is severed, if an electromagnetic pulse strikes, or if the administrative state activates an emergency kill switch, how do human beings continue to transact money, maintain a public ledger of truth, and communicate securely with their families?
The answer has already been engineered, deployed, and operationalized across the globe: The Off-Grid Parallel Stack.
At the financial layer, Blockstream Satellite broadcasts the entire real-time Bitcoin blockchain twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, via commercial geostationary satellites. Anyone on Earth with an inexpensive secondhand satellite TV dish and a $25 software-defined radio (SDR) USB dongle can continuously synchronize the global financial ledger with zero internet connection, zero landline, zero cellular service, and zero IP address footprint.
At the messaging layer, protocols such as Briar and Meshtastic (LoRa) provide peer-to-peer, delay-tolerant mesh communication. Briar routes encrypted messages directly via local Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, hopping securely from device to device in physical meatspace without passing through a single centralized server.
This forensic investigation analyzes the orbital parameters, radiofrequency downlinks, cryptographic mesh topologies, and operational deployment guides of Blockstream Satellite and Briar to answer a foundational survival question: When the wire is cut and the screens go black, how does human freedom survive off-grid?
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ TERRESTRIAL INTERNET VS. OFF-GRID P2P STACK │
├─────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────┤
│ SYSTEM METRIC │ TRADITIONAL INTERNET │ BLOCKSTREAM + BRIAR │
├─────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
│ Physical Vector │ Undersea glass fiber, 5G │ Geostationary C/Ku │
│ │ towers, centralized IXPs │ band radio + P2P BT │
├─────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
│ State Kill-Switch │ Absolute vulnerability; │ IMMUNE; radio waves │
│ Vulnerability │ ISP routes shut down in sec│ blanket the earth; │
│ │ by central order. │ cannot be switched. │
├─────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
│ User Metadata & │ 100% exposed; ISP logs IP, │ ZERO METADATA; user │
│ Surveillance Trail │ MAC, GPS, and DNS lookups. │ only LISTENS to the │
│ │ │ satellite downlink! │
├─────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
│ Operational Power │ Requires functional grid │ Operates on a 12V │
│ Requirement │ and local cell tower power │ car battery or small│
│ │ generator uptime. │ 50W solar panel. │
├─────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
│ Cost of Ingestion │ Monthly recurring fees to │ 100% FREE; no sub- │
│ │ corporate ISP cartel. │ scription, no KYC. │
└─────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────┘
Key Forensic Questions Under Investigation
- What physical and geopolitical vulnerabilities threaten the 550 undersea fiber-optic cables that carry global commerce?
- How does Blockstream Satellite broadcast the global Bitcoin blockchain without requiring the end-user to possess an internet subscription?
- What specific radio hardware (LNB, SDR, parabolic dish) is required to assemble an off-grid Bitcoin satellite receiver for under $100?
- How does the Briar messaging protocol route end-to-end encrypted messages through local Bluetooth and Wi-Fi mesh networks during a complete telecommunications blackout?
- How do long-range (LoRa) radio networks operating on ISM frequencies enable off-grid communication over dozens of miles?
- Why does the survival of honest money and free speech depend on decoupling our communications from the centralized wire?
I. The Anatomy of Fragility: The Undersea Glass Cables
To understand the urgent necessity of off-grid communications, one must confront the extreme physical fragility of the modern internet.
Corporate marketing campaigns depict the cloud as a celestial, ethereal matrix. In truth, the global internet is an industrial maritime artifact:
THE UNDERSEA NERVE CENTER
│
┌────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┐
▼ ▼
THE PHYSICAL CABLE THE CHOKE POINTS
A 1-inch-thick garden hose 90% of Atlantic/Pacific data
carrying 8 to 16 pairs of glass converges through shallow maritime
optical fibers; clad in steel wire channels: English Channel, Red Sea,
and polyethylene insulation Luzon Strait, and Strait of Malacca
│ │
└────────────────────────┬────────────────────────┘
▼
SYSTEMIC VULNERABILITY
• Over 150 Cable Breaks Occur Annually
• Repair Ships Take Weeks or Months to Arrive
• Sabotage: A Single Submersible Drone Cuts Continents!
Consider the documented vulnerabilities of this infrastructure:
- Physical Choke Points: In the Red Sea—a narrow waterway connecting Europe to Asia—sixteen major undersea cables lie crowded in shallow waters. In March 2024, an anchor dragging behind a cargo ship disabled three major cables, instantly severing 25 percent of all internet traffic between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
- Kinetic State Sabotage: Following the mysterious underwater demolition of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, military strategists recognized that undersea communications cables are completely defenseless against deep-diving submersibles and underwater drones.
- The State Kill Switch: Because terrestrial fiber cables must connect to municipal switching stations owned or licensed by state telecommunications authorities, governments can shut down domestic access instantly. During the 2011 Arab Spring, the Egyptian government issued five phone calls to the five primary domestic ISPs, terminating 93 percent of all internet connectivity across the entire country in less than twenty minutes.
If an authoritarian government cuts the wire, or if a geopolitical conflict severs undersea cables, traditional internet access ceases to exist. Banking apps freeze, credit card terminals go dead, and citizens are blinded and isolated.
II. Blockstream Satellite: The Skyborn Financial Ledger
In August 2017, Canadian cryptographer and cypherpunk pioneer Dr. Adam Back (inventor of Hashcash, cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin Whitepaper) and the engineering team at Blockstream launched a revolutionary infrastructure project: Blockstream Satellite.
The engineering mandate was audacious: Liberate the Bitcoin blockchain from the terrestrial internet.
Instead of relying on undersea cables or local fiber connections to synchronize transactions, Blockstream leased commercial transponder bandwidth on four geostationary telecommunications satellites stationed roughly 35,786 kilometers (22,236 miles) above the equator.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ BLOCKSTREAM SATELLITE CONSTELLATION MAP │
├─────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤
│ SATELLITE NAME │ ORBITAL POSITION │ GLOBAL COVERAGE ZONE │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Galaxy 18 │ 123.0° West │ North America │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Eutelsat 113WA │ 113.0° West │ South & Central │
│ │ │ America │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Telstar 11N │ 37.5° West │ Africa and Europe │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Telstar 18V │ 138.0° East │ Asia-Pacific & │
│ │ │ Australia │
└─────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┴───────────────────────┘
Together, these four satellites blanket nearly 100 percent of the Earth's landmass in a continuous, downward-streaming radio shower of Bitcoin blockchain data.
The Pure Receive Architecture: Complete Privacy
The foundational genius of the Blockstream Satellite system lies in its downlink-only architecture:
THE SATELLITE DOWNLINK TOPOLOGY
│
[BLOCKSTREAM MASTER GROUND STATIONS]
(Extracts live blocks from Bitcoin network)
│
▼
[GEONSTATIONARY SATELLITE TRANSPONDER]
(Broadcasts DVB-S2 Signal at C/Ku Band)
│
┌─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
OFF-GRID RECEIVER OFF-GRID RECEIVER OFF-GRID RECEIVER
(Cabin in Idaho) (Village in Nigeria) (Boat in Pacific)
• Standard TV Dish • Standard TV Dish • Standard TV Dish
• RTL-SDR USB Dongle • RTL-SDR USB Dongle • RTL-SDR USB Dongle
• Raspberry Pi Node • Raspberry Pi Node • Raspberry Pi Node
In traditional internet operations, every time your computer queries the blockchain, it sends an outbound packet containing your IP address, revealing your physical location, your service provider, and your financial activity to state surveillance dragneys.
Blockstream Satellite operates like an old-fashioned FM radio broadcast:
- The satellite broadcasts the data continuously to the entire hemisphere simultaneously.
- The end-user only listens. The dish emits zero outbound radio signals, zero transmissions, and zero packets.
- The user leaves zero electromagnetic footprint. Neither the government, the local ISP, nor Blockstream itself can ever know that a specific dish is receiving the data.
Even if an authoritarian regime cuts all civilian internet connections across the entire country, a citizen sitting in an off-grid cabin powered by a car battery can continuously receive every new Bitcoin block, verify every transaction, and maintain an immutable copy of the monetary ledger.
III. Building the $100 Off-Grid Satellite Node
One of the greatest achievements of the Blockstream Satellite engineering team was ensuring that the receiver hardware was not a proprietary, multi-thousand-dollar military black box.
The system was designed from the ground up to utilize cheap, commercially available consumer television scrap:
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ THE $100 SATELLITE NODE HARDWARE MANIFEST │
├─────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤
│ COMPONENT │ HARDWARE PROFILE │ ESTIMATED COST (USD) │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Parabolic Dish │ Standard 60cm–90cm scrap │ $0.00 – $25.00 │
│ │ TV dish (DirecTV / Dish) │ (Readily scavenged) │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ LNB (Low Noise │ Standard Ku-band or │ $15.00 – $20.00 │
│ Block Downconverter)│ C-band linear LNB │ │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ SDR Receiver │ RTL-SDR v3 or v4 │ $25.00 – $35.00 │
│ USB Dongle │ Software Defined Radio │ │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Coaxial Cable │ RG6 Coaxial with F-type │ $5.00 – $10.00 │
│ │ connectors + SMA adapter │ │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Processing Node │ Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) or │ $35.00 – $50.00 │
│ │ refurbished thin client │ │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ TOTAL SYSTEM COST │ Complete Off-Grid Node │ UNDER $100.00 USD! │
└─────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┴───────────────────────┘
The signal is broadcast using the DVB-S2 (Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite) standard—the exact same modulation standard used to broadcast commercial satellite television channels.
Using the open-source Blockstream Satellite software (based on GNU Radio) running on a low-power Linux computer or Raspberry Pi:
- The Ku-band LNB on the dish receives the high-frequency satellite signal (11 to 12 GHz), down-converting it to an intermediate frequency (IF) between 950 and 2150 MHz.
- The coaxial cable feeds the IF signal directly into the RTL-SDR USB dongle plugged into the Raspberry Pi.
- The software decodes the radio signal into raw IP packets, extracting the Bitcoin block data and feeding it directly into the local
bitcoinddaemon via a virtual network interface.
With this simple setup, a user possesses an unjammable, permanent window into the global financial ledger.
IV. Transmitting Without the Internet: The Outbound Asymmetric Vector
A common skeptical objection arises: "Blockstream Satellite allows you to RECEIVE the blockchain, but how do you BROADCAST a transaction if the internet is shut down?"
This objection fundamentally misunderstands the asymmetric nature of Bitcoin data:
- Receiving the Blockchain is High-Bandwidth: A full node must ingest hundreds of megabytes of block data every day (thousands of transactions per block). This is the heavy lifting solved by the satellite broadcast.
- Broadcasting a Transaction is Micro-Bandwidth: A signed Bitcoin transaction is tiny—typically between 250 and 500 bytes of plain text!
To transmit 250 bytes of data out of a blackout zone, you do not need broadband fiber:
OUTBOUND MICRO-TRANSACTION VECTORS
│
[SIGNED BITCOIN TRANSACTION: ~300 BYTES]
│
┌──────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
HF SHORTWAVE RADIO SMS SATELLITE PHONE SATELLITE API
Transmit raw hex transaction Send 300 bytes of hex Blockstream Satellite
via amateur radio (JS8Call / via Iridium or Garmin API allows broadcasting
radioteletype) to an off-grid inReach to an outside encrypted payloads
gateway 2,000 miles away! automated relay server! via geostationary uplinks!
- Amateur High-Frequency (HF) Radio: In 2019, cypherpunk developers demonstrated that raw signed Bitcoin transactions can be transmitted across oceans using shortwave radio (JS8Call or Ham radio). A transaction transmitted from a battery-powered radio transceiver in Michigan was received and broadcast to the mempool by a listening station in California, completely bypassing the internet.
- Satellite Messengers (Garmin inReach / Iridium): A 300-byte transaction can be broken into two short text messages and sent via the low-earth-orbit Iridium satellite constellation to an automated Twitter bot or email gateway in an unblocked nation, which pushes the hex string into the mempool.
- The Blockstream Satellite API: Blockstream’s satellite constellation includes an open API that allows anyone in the world to upload and broadcast arbitrary encrypted data payloads across the globe, paid for per-byte using the Lightning Network!
The feedback loop is complete: you receive the ledger via the sky, and you broadcast your signed spend using shortwave radio or satellite text. The entire financial cycle survives the destruction of the internet.
V. Briar: Encrypted Communications in the Blackout
While Blockstream Satellite protects the monetary ledger, what protects human communication? How do dissidents, journalists, and families coordinate when local cell towers are switched off?
The definitive software solution for localized blackout communication is the Briar Messaging Project.
Engineered by cypherpunk developers and funded by open-source security grants, Briar is an encrypted, peer-to-peer messaging application designed specifically for activists, journalists, and civil defense during infrastructure collapse.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ BRIAR PROTOCOL COMMUNICATION TOPOLOGY │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ MODE 1: CLOUD ROUTING (NORMAL TIMES) │
│ When the internet is functional, Briar connects directly peer-to-peer │
│ through the Tor onion network. ZERO central servers; zero metadata. │
│ │
│ MODE 2: LOCAL WI-FI MESH (LOCAL BLACKOUT) │
│ When the ISP connection is severed, Briar automatically discovers │
│ other Briar nodes on the same local Wi-Fi router—even if the router has│
│ NO CONNECTION to the outside internet! │
│ │
│ MODE 3: DIRECT BLUETOOTH AD-HOC (TOTAL INFRASTRUCTURE COLLAPSE) │
│ When the power grid fails and routers die, Briar connects directly │
│ phone-to-phone via BLUETOOTH within a 30-foot radius. │
│ │
│ MODE 4: SNEAKERNET STORE-AND-FORWARD (DELAY-TOLERANT NETWORKING) │
│ Encrypted messages are stored in a phone's memory and physically │
│ carried across town. When the carrier passes another Briar user, the │
│ encrypted message hops to the new phone, traveling through meatspace! │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Briar operates without a single central server:
- There is no company to subpoena.
- There are no user accounts, phone numbers, or passwords stored on a corporate database.
- Every Briar account lives exclusively on the user’s local hardware.
- Cryptographic keys are generated locally using Ed25519 signatures and X25519 key agreement, with end-to-end encryption enforced via the Bramble Rendezvous Protocol.
The Meatspace Mesh: Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN)
The most revolutionary feature of Briar is its implementation of Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN).
Imagine a city under a total telecommunications shutdown during a natural disaster or martial law:
- Citizen A in the northern suburb writes an encrypted message to Citizen B in the southern suburb.
- There is no cellular service, no internet, and Citizen A is miles away from Citizen B.
- Citizen A's phone transmits the encrypted blob to Citizen C (a mail carrier or commuter walking down the street) via a direct Bluetooth handshake as they walk past each other.
- Citizen C cannot read the message; it is a solid block of encrypted ciphertext.
- Citizen C walks three miles across the city. As Citizen C passes Citizen D, the message hops again.
- By evening, the encrypted packet hops to Citizen B's phone. Citizen B's private key decrypts the message.
The communication travels through the physical movement of human beings—an invisible, unblockable sneakernet embedded within the routine daily life of the city.
VI. LoRa and Meshtastic: The Long-Range Radio Mesh
To bridge distances greater than Bluetooth’s 30-foot range without relying on cellular networks, the off-grid ecosystem has embraced LoRa (Long Range) technology through open-source projects such as Meshtastic.
Operating on license-free industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) radio bands—915 MHz in the Americas, 868 MHz in Europe—Meshtastic utilizes small, ultra-low-power radio transceivers costing less than $30 each (such as the Heltec V3 or LilyGO T-Beam).
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ THE MESHTASTIC LORA ARCHITECTURE │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • FREQUENCY: 915 MHz / 868 MHz spread-spectrum chirps (Chirp Spread │
│ Spectrum - CSS), capable of penetrating urban concrete and foliage. │
│ │
│ • RANGE: 3 to 10 miles in urban terrain; OVER 50 MILES line-of-sight │
│ from mountaintops or rooftop antennas! │
│ │
│ • AUTONOMOUS MESHING: Every Meshtastic node acts as an automated packet│
│ repeater. If Node A cannot reach Node C, Node B automatically repeats│
│ the encrypted packet across the city! │
│ │
│ • ENCRYPTION: Military-grade AES-256 encryption applied to all private │
│ channels; messages cannot be decrypted by eavesdropping scanners. │
│ │
│ • POWER CONSUMPTION: Operates for DAYS on a single 18650 lithium-ion │
│ battery; can run INDEFINITELY on a tiny 5-watt solar panel! │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
By mounting a Meshtastic node on a residential chimney, a tree branch, or a mountain ridge, communities construct their own autonomous, community-owned communications networks.
A network of fifty Meshtastic nodes can blanket an entire metropolitan area in an unjammable, encrypted text and GPS coordination network that operates completely independent of the commercial electrical grid, cellular towers, or internet providers.
VII. Deconstructing the Centralized Panopticon
The existence of Blockstream Satellite, Briar, and Meshtastic reveals a profound, emancipatory truth: Centralized digital tyranny is a choice, not a technological inevitability.
The modern state and its corporate partners have conditioned the public to accept a model of technology that requires total submission to the central wire:
- To pay for groceries, you must ask permission from a centralized bank API.
- To speak to your neighbor, your message must route through a corporate server in Silicon Valley.
- To know the news, you must rely on algorithmic feeds curated by state-approved censors.
This centralization is not designed for efficiency; it is designed for control. A centralized wire can be monitored, taxed, censored, and turned off.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ THE TWO PATHS OF HUMAN TECHNOLOGY │
├─────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ THE CENTRALIZED CAGE │ THE DECENTRALIZED PARALLEL STACK │
├─────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Central Bank Digital │ • Bitcoin via Blockstream Satellite │
│ Currencies (CBDCs) │ (Unjammable, permissionless sound money) │
├─────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Corporate Social Media│ • Briar P2P + Meshtastic LoRa │
│ (Logged & Censored) │ (Serverless, meatspace-hopping encryption) │
├─────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Undersea Fiber & 5G │ • Local Mesh Networks & Radio Downlinks │
│ (Single Point of Kill)│ (Immune to infrastructure collapse) │
└─────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The tools of the unindexed front represent the ultimate insurance policy for human freedom. By combining satellite downlinks from the heavens with peer-to-peer radio meshes across the earth, foundational individuals can construct a parallel civilization that cannot be turned off with an executive order, severed by a submarine anchor, or silenced by a central kill switch.
When the screens flicker and the wire goes dark, those who built the parallel stack will not be in the dark.
They will simply look to the sky, listen to the radio, and continue to live as free human beings.
VIII. Verifiable Primary Sources Ledger
For network engineers, cryptographers, and emergency communications specialists seeking to verify the technical protocols and software implementations of Blockstream Satellite and Briar, the following primary repositories and documents are essential:
- Blockstream Satellite Technical Specifications & Codebase:
Blockstream Corporation, Blockstream Satellite Architecture and GNU Radio Integration, Official Documentation and Open Source Repositories, 2017–2026. Contains DVB-S2 modulation parameters, frequency bands, and receiver setup scripts at Blockstream Satellite Official Portal and Blockstream Satellite GitHub Repository. - The Briar Project Architecture Specification:
The Briar Project, Bramble Protocol Stack Specification: Bramble Rendezvous Protocol and Bramble Synchronization Protocol, 2018–2026. Cryptographic specifications for delay-tolerant mesh routing via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct at Briar Project How It Works & Architecture and Briar Project Repository. - Meshtastic Open-Source LoRa Protocol:
Meshtastic Project, Meshtastic: An Open Source, Off-Grid Mesh Communication System, Documentation and Firmware Repositories, 2020–2026. Details 915/868 MHz channel configurations, AES-256 encryption implementation, and packet routing algorithms at Meshtastic Official Documentation and Meshtastic GitHub. - Undersea Cable Vulnerability & Geopolitics:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), "Invisible and Indispensable: Undersea Cables and the Global Economy," CSIS Briefs, Washington, D.C., March 2021. Documents global choke points and physical vulnerability of undersea fiber infrastructure at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). - Adam Back & Cypherpunk Foundations:
Back, Adam, "Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure," Technical Report, August 2002. Historical lineage of the proof-of-work mechanism powering the satellite ledger at Hashcash Official Whitepaper. - United States Federal Communications Commission DVB-S2 Registrations:
FCC International Bureau, Satellite Division, Space Station and Earth Station authorizations for geostationary commercial C-band and Ku-band digital video broadcasts, Washington, D.C. at Federal Communications Commission International Communications Filing System (ICFS).