There can be only one reason to do this and I'd imagine that they've engineered in some safeguards against it.
Exactly. And that safeguard is the installer. The equipment is
designed to access more than one satellite in more than one mode. So in the wrong hands, Exede hardware is perfectly capable of locking onto either of 2 satellites, especially given the 4 degrees of proximity.
It's the installer who must ensure that (correct) parameters
assigned to that specific customer are provisioned into the modem
before permitting the transmitter to radiate
I will concede though, that the probability of this happening is low. So in the spirit of fairness, I should have opened by saying "
Possible, but not probable"". Reasons being, we'd have to be talking adjacent beams here. And even then it's a 50/50 chance, because ViaSat1 uses alternating polarization. All the WB1 beams are all LHCP. ViaSat1 beams alternate RHCP and LHCP. So it would have to be a situation where there was beam overlap between WB1 and a LHCP ViaSat beam. Finally, there's the transmitter lockout feature. The transmitter will not radiate unless/until a valid receive signal is detected. So we're talking an adjacent beam scenario, where beam polarization is the same AND where the modem contains an otherwise valid receive frequency and polarization - but from the wrong satellite. Like I said, possible - but not probable. It would take a specific set of circumstances AND an inexperienced installer, but it could happen.
//greg//