British Expats in the south of Spain (Costa del Sol / Malaga areas) and Portugal areas using the Satback service on Intelsat 27.5 wesy have this week lost access to the UK TV.

It was always speculated that the service, that is not for public use, may come to an end on this satellite, as the satellite comes to the end of its mission life.

But this week the Satback service, which carries approx 15 UK TV channels including BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, and Channel 4, was swicthed off, leaving thousands of viewers in the south western areas of Spain and Portugal looking at blank screens.

The video below is a summary about the switch off of Satback on Intelsat 27.5w

Click to view video about this loss of channels

The Satback service has now transferred to the a new satellite location at 15W. The beam the Satback service is now on makes the service pretty much unavailable in the South of Spain and Portugal areas. And with no access to the official UK TV Astra 2 satellites, the switch off has left people scrambling for a solution.

Such as using a VPN (like NORDVPN ) or SmartDNS service ( like SmartDNSProxy ) and access the official apps for BBC iPlayer and ITVX on various devices, like a firestick.

Or use a pirate IPTV service, and accept the increasing risks of fines for viewing content on these types of services. (Italy have new laws where users of illegal IPTV services can be fined up to 5000euros. And reports are that Spain is close to bringing in something similar.)

There is one possible solution for people in the South of Spain and Portugal to continue to receive their UK TV channels via satellite.

One option would be to use the Kabelio satellite TV service from Switzerland. This pay package includes all the main UK TV channels ( BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC 4, ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, Channel 4, Channel 5, Film4). Reception of the Kabelio satellite TV service from Switzerland is easy in Spain and Portugal as it has good coverage from the Hotbird / Eutelsat at 13°E.

An 80cm dish will easily suffice for reception of these UK TV channels on Hotbird.

However, the channels are part of the Kabelio pay TV Service, and getting a viewing card could be tricky as these are generally only assigned to Swiss addresses.

There may be some for sale on Amazon and ebay, with limited initial access. Further access will need a further subscription, and inputting of a Swiss address.