Andy E.

As strange as the title sounds, this is precisely what I believe has happened to SiriusXM or my PCM during the last few weeks.

Picture this: I'm driving on a curvy country road in the GTS and listening to my favorite Classic Vinyl SAT channel; windows down, sport-mode activated, throaty V-8 rumble happening and then, it strikes! The music stops and is replaced by a man or woman narrator who are speaking in a full-blown Arabic language. Since I do not speak the language, I did listen to a few words where they keep repeating the word "Iran" in many sentences.

A quick call to SiriusXM resulted in my call being intercepted by a Filipino woman at a call center in the Philippines who kept trying desperately to repeat what I would tell her. Unfortunately, the word "Arabic" sounded too much like "Aerobic" to this poor woman who couldn't speak English well enough to save her life. Needless to say that I gave up on Sirius XM's call center and have tried several refresh signals. After a few days of "Arabic-free" listening, the hack has returned today.

BTW, this Arabic station literally takes over any SiriusXM channel and at any time of the day. Switching channels works temporarily but may or may not help the situation.

What gives and am I a targeted victim here?

RT_955TT_KY

Sounds like your traffic info broadcast (forgot the PCM name) is active and is set to a particular channel that is broadcasting Arabic.

User 52121

Yeah good call there ^^^

Do you have a little "TP" with a checkmark showing up the bottom right corner of your screen?

prosled8

Just sounds like an attempt at improving Sirus/XM's horrible programming...

Andy E.

Thanks guys. Yes, by disabling the TP (Traffic Program) on the FM tuner, the middle eastern radio station seems to have stopped...for now.

This brings me to a key question as to why these stations are allowed to broadcast on reserved RDS-TMC frequencies that are reserved for traffic messaging. Since there was no specific setting of any station on my PCM, how did I receive this?

User 52121

Based on what I've read it's really only used in the EU and not here in the US. So it might not actually be "reserved" frequencies for that purpose here.

7 Summits

I've always wondered what that "TP" was. I only get XM radio not traffic and weather so haven't run into this problem but I'm glad you got it sorted and that I now know what it is.

touareg

It is part of the RDS protocol, the idea behind it is if you are listening to a CD, another station, etc. The radio monitors the TP/TA flag from all stations in the RDS signal, if that flag is set, it tunes to that station then the broadcaster is announcing something important, the flag should then stop after they are done, and it resumes whatever you were doing. It should work as a PA type system.

Problem I assume is someone is using an RDS system and does not know what they are doing, or there is a bug in their system. Normally not a concern because NA market does not seem to care about it. Just like the RDS stream can have ads vs track info, I doubt there is any body that controls if they can enable the flag or not.

That is why you can just shut it off....

RKD in OKC

Mine was switching to the local Sports Animal station.

Dilberto

Get rid of that antiquated TP.... it never works right anyways.

JAGMAN1

I had my US '04 Cayenne for 5 years and never once received real time traffic if any use here in the US. Then I moved to Germany and every construction site and traffic jam appeared in real time on my measly old PCM 2.0.

The funky letters that describe the presets made sense there too.

daviddarwin

It's possible that what you're experiencing is a technical glitch or interference rather than a targeted hacking attempt. Unusual signal interference or software bugs could result in your radio picking up unintended broadcasts.