Well, i was thinking about this last year. When a satellite gets older and is taken out of broadcast service it is usually relocated to a new orbital slot and is rented out for ‘ocasional use’ like feeds and short term data traffic. Also the fuel to keep it in its spot is slowly running out so the position accuracy is reduced. It’s still in the same orbital slot but with an oscillating decination of a few degrees to the north or south. This would be an ideal constellation for othernet boradcasts since when receiving with the bare LNB, the focus is not THAT important. Of course if you use a small dish to improve reception, this won’t work.
I know for sure SES has a couple of these old birds flying around (see https://gso-satellites.nl/, the ‘incl.’ column) and they might be willing to support an experimental broadcast of one or more signals on one of these birds. Hopefully for free or a greatly reduced fee.
