Why do Malaysia TV and radio stations signal easily overspill to Indonesia territories in Riau and North Sumatera provinces, meanwhile Indonesia local terrestrial TV and radio stations have limited coverage?

For many decades, occasionally Indonesia KOMINFO (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology) would raise the issue of Malaysia TV and radio transmission always overspilled their signals to Indonesia territories, causing Indonesia people in bordering areas access Malaysia TV and radio stations than local ones, even interference to the local radio stations.

However, Malaysia TV and radio stations are often ordered to decrease the transmission power to less overspill to Indonesia territories.

The reasons of Malaysia TV and radio stations signal easily overspill to Indonesia territories, and Indonesians who stay in bordering areas access more on Malaysia channels than Indonesia local ones are:

1. Malaysia TV and radio stations transmitter sites are very high, from Gunung Ulu Kali to Gunung Ledang, the height of the sites are between 1200m to 1800m. Between east coast of Sumatera Island and Peninsular Malaysia, there are no having any terrains, so Malaysia TV and radio stations can overspill easily to Riau and part of North Sumatera.

2. About the transmitter sites, Malaysia TV and radio transmitter locations are mountain/hill based towers which means the transmitting towers are located at the top of the mountains/hills, meanwhile Indonesia TV and radio transmitter sites are land based towers. When Indonesia local TV and radio stations are transmitted from the land based towers, due to lower height, so the coverage is very limited in Indonesia, causing Indonesia people access Malaysia channels than local ones.

3. Regarding Indonesia free-to-air commercial television channels such as RCTI, Trans7, Indosiar etc, these TV stations don't even add repeaters in Riau province outside Pekanbaru like TVRI (Indonesia's public TV station) because there are no market value as they are operating TV broadcast commercially without government or public funds. In Indonesia, most of the areas are only covered by TVRI and RRI services where are public broadcaster. When TVRI is not the preferable channels to some Indonesia people while their favorite TV channels like RCTI, SCTV, MNCTV etc are not available in their locations, hence they will switch to watch Malaysia TV channels, even Singapore as the alternative platform.

When most of Indonesian who are staying in Riau bordering areas with Malaysia are watching Malaysia and Singapore TV channels, the Indonesia government are worrying that the people there would lose their nationalism.

4. Information of Riau province outside Pekanbaru is far behind than Medan, Jakarta, Surabaya, Bali etc as most of Indonesia broadcasters does not reach information to Riau rural areas (Rokan Hilir). Coincidentally, because of the strategic geographical condition where Rokan Hilir can receive overspill signals of TV and radio stations from Malaysia, this causes the people to access Malaysia information than Indonesia in Rokan Hilir.

My suggestion to Indonesia broadcasters (especially TV) to improve their coverage in Riau province, Indonesia.

1. Some of Indonesia digital terrestrial TV towers are using low power transmitters to cover the targeting location, actually the TV broadcasters can increase their transmission power to reach more coverage, even they can increase the antenna gain by using higher gain of UHF transmitting antenna.

2. For commercial TV broadcasters who have transmitter in the capital city of Riau province, they can use high power transmitter and higher gain of UHF antenna, this would result higher ERP (effective radiated power), and they can reach more coverage without adding auxiliary transmitters in rural areas where have no commercial value.