Rangeedu television transmitter

The Rangeedu television transmitter was an analog terrestrial television transmitter in Rangeedu, the capital of the Xalxas Autonomy. Commissioned in January 1971 and later finished in October of the same year, it provided five television channels to the Xalxas Autonomy: XBC and four Mediacorp channels.
Instability in the last few months of 2018 has rendered the transmitter nearly obsolete, even before the government's mandated plan to finish analog terrestrial television signals on January 1, 2019 (later postponed by a day to January 2, 2019). The transmitter waited for an official announcement by the MRA to shut down the signals transmitted by it when all channels were disabled from transmitting the switchover message. Eventually work was made to keep the transmitter operational at makeshift status by the scheduled date, television signals were stopped on January 31 and the transmitter was slowly decommissioned.
==History==
When television services expanded to cover all of Lenapore in the 1960s, any television signal in the Handak and Xalxas autonomies was out of hand. Following the change of Lenapore's sovereign status as a country in 1963, the Handakian authorities decided to introduce television, but the poorer Xalxans had to wait for a few more years.
In October 1971, the Rangeedu television transmitter was finished. It relayed the two channels existing in Lenapore at the time: LRT Channel 5 on channel 4 and LRT Channel 8 on channel 11. In 1979, XBC Television launched and LRT Channel 5 moved to channel 11. Viewers of Rangeedu were confined to just one LRT channel due to bandwidth limitations.
The last significant upgrade to the transmitter was around 1990, when LBC and XBC were both capable of adding stereo, teletext and UHF transmission to it. Channel 42 was occupied by Channel 8, channel 33 by Channel 10 and Channel 25 by Channel 12. Eventually Channel 10 became Sakura and Channel 12 became Premiere 12. Prime 12 wasn't broadcast. For many years, from 1995 to the arrival of the digital terrestrial transmitters, Rangeedu was deprived from receiving the remaining LIM/Mediacorp TV channels, the LPBS channels and even the LPH Mediaworks channels, unless they were subscribed to the satellite service of Lenapore Cable Vision. The transmitter was powerful enough to cover the entire autonomy, its power nearly fifty years later started to show signs of failure and instability (as seen below). Digital terrestrial television arrived in 2008 when the XBC built a new television transmitter near its new facility (the former building is now occupied by Pangai Entertainment) broadcasting exclusively over DTT, initially in the DVB-T format, later upgrading to DVB-T2, in line with the rest of the country, in 2013. Further digital transmitters were built in Koteedu in 2009 and Inaaru in 2011. These transmitters combined give a strength similar to that of the decommissioned transmitter by providing a digital signal to the autonomy with a few "shadow areas".
===Recent failures===
At 00:30 on the early hours of September 27, 2018, the transmitter's five television channels went to static for a while, when a local repairman had fixed it around 01:20, the Mediacorp channels were working, XBC followed hours later.
On September 29, the transmitter resumed operations yet there has been a series of intermittent signal failures. The struggle for the transmitter was its maintenance by the end of the year in accordance with Lenaporean laws. Officials hope that the signal will be switched off regardless of any further failure until the Lenaporean switchover deadline. Security measures were increased so that there won't be a new shortage before the government-mandated analog shutdown date of December 31.
In spite of these measures, however, a new signal failure emerged on the morning of December 25th. The Nedia Regulatory Authority says that the transmitter will be able to show new signs of activity in time for January 2, otherwise the regulatory body will have to delay the switchover even further. The primary cause of the delay was primarily to assist the poor, however they seem to live in areas where analog transmissions are still active.
The transmitter was fixed again on the morning of December 30. Initially, there were some smaller failures during the broadcast that are able to last for quick periods of time, often a few seconds. These were later solved in time for the analog switch off. XBC later ran a Xalxan version of the analog switchover slide seen on the national channels. By the end of January, the MRA/MDA slide was taken off the air and later entered its decommissioning stage.
===Decommissioning===
On February 1, 2019, the MRA and the MDA jointly announced, with the government of the Xalxas Autonomy, that the transmitter was set to be decommissioned. Decommissioning work started on February 10 and ended on March 28.
A tree was planted in June of that year to symbolize the Xalxan strength for protecting their environment.
==Services==
*4 - XBC Television
*11 - Mediacorp Channel 5
*25 - Okto
*33 - Sakura
*42 - Mediacorp Channel 8
Teletext was carried on 11, 33 and 42