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Spring Solar Outage – March 3, 2021 to March 11, 2021 |
The Impact on Hotwire Customers
“Sun Outages” or solar interference occur February/March and September/October of each year, and result in the degradation or loss of satellite signal for short periods of time each day for about two weeks.
During a solar outage it may not be possible to receive the signal from the satellite, or alternatively the signal will be degraded. Solar outages affect all satellite systems, and they are quite predictable and they arise from the basic physics behind the operation of a satellite system.
The effects will be seen on most channels and will occur during various times of the day. Interruptions can last from just a few minutes to up to 10 minutes a day and can range from mild to severe.
A sun outage takes place when the orbital positions of the satellite and the sun are in one line. The earth station receives signals from both, but the more powerful sun rays subdue the desired signal, causing a loss of service. Since Hotwire Communications receives our signals from a variety of satellites, the solar outages can occur at different times on different channels.
A sun outage is similar in behavior to a rain fade. The high energy level and broadband nature of the sun’s energy can overpower a satellite’s downlink signal and effectively wash out a receive signal with noise. Due to the angle of the sun in relationship to the satellite, a sun outage is actually a mixture of degraded receive performance with the possibility of a circuit outage.
All customers are impacted by this phenomenon.
- Customers will be impacted specifically from March 3rd – March 11th
Note: Sun outages do not affect Internet, Phone or VOD services
Service Impacts
Customers may see sparkles in the first days of the sun outage timeframe. It may gradually deteriorate to the point of total outage. Some channels will experience blocks or freeze frames in the picture before and after the peak times.
- These are the channels we receive digitally from the satellite.
- Once it reaches peak, the interference gradually decreases and becomes less noticeable each day after the peak.
- Unfortunately, there is technically nothing that can be done to prevent the sun outage effects.
- The degree of interference depends, among other things, on the bandwidth that the receiver is using at the time.
- Sun outages are a short–term problem.
- Sun outages are not TV outages.
- If any group of channels is affected for much more than 15 minutes or if all channels are affected at one time, the technical department should be notified. There may be a problem that is unrelated to sun outages.
Sincerely,
Joey Gonzalez | Account Manager
For immediate assistance, please contact our 24/7 Customer Care Center by calling 1-800-355-5668
https://hotwirefision.app.link/app_download
CORPORATE SITE: www.hotwirecommunications.com
CUSTOMER SITE: gethotwired.com
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