[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] Between February 27th and March 9th, 2022, you may experience brief, unavoidable interruptions to your TV services due to sun outages

[Ken Pogran]

The email I received from Astound/RCN said these outages would affect 
"TV service", but didn't mention Internet.

These cable channel solar outages have got to be affecting all local 
cable providers equally.

Cable channels are distributed via geosynchronous communication 
satellites.  During a period a few days before the spring equinox and 
after the fall equinox, for a few minutes each day the sun appears 
directly "behind" the satellite a cable provider's receiving antenna is 
pointed at, and the solar radiation overwhelms the receiver. A cable 
provider's "head end" site in a given region will have a small cluster 
of receiving antennas pointing in slightly different directions at the 
various satellites; each will experience slightly different solar outages.

There may be "landline" backups for the several major television 
networks (I don't know), but the so-called Multichannel Video 
Programming Distributors offer so many channels that satellite is the 
only realistic/economic way to distribute them.

The Wikipedia article Sun outage 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_outage> offers more detail, including 
the following:

Sun outages occur before the March equinox (in February and March) and 
after the September equinox (in September and October) for the Northern 
Hemisphere, and occur after the March equinox and before the September 
equinox for the Southern Hemisphere. At these times, the apparent path 
of the Sun across the sky takes it directly behind the line of sight 
between an earth station and a satellite. The Sun radiates strongly 
across the entire spectrum, including the microwave frequencies used to 
communicate with satellites (C band, Ku band, and Ka band), so the Sun 
swamps the signal from the satellite. The effects of a Sun outage range 
from partial degradation (increase in the error rate) to the total 
destruction of the signal. The effect sweeps from north to south from 
approximately 20 February to 20 April, and from south to north from 
approximately 20 August to 20 October, affecting any specific location 
for less than 12 minutes a day for a few consecutive days.

Ken Pogran

Mitchell I. Wolfe wrote on 2/28/22 1:05 PM:
>
> Here <https://www.astound.com/support/tv/sun-outages/> is the RCN 
> (Astound Broadband) explanation. It includes the following:
>
> /"The sun outage happens only during the day between 10:30 AM and 5:30 
> PM ET (no sun, no interference) and is brief, lasting for a few 
> minutes—from 5 minutes, up to 15 minutes."/
>
> -- Mitch
>
> On 2022-02-28 11:23, Robert Primak wrote:
>
>> Comcast/Xfinity has not made such an announcement. Maybe we on 
>> Comcast have a better backup system? Something to consider when 
>> choosing a provider?
>> Or maybe Comcast is simply not telling us something?
>> I haven't had any scheduled recordings yet since Feb. 27th, so I'll 
>> just have to stand by and stay tuned.
>> -- Bob Primak
>> On Monday, February 28, 2022, 11:06:14 AM EST, Martin Kafka 
>> <mpkafka at rcn.com> wrote:
>> I received this message from my Internet Provider, RCN, recently 
>> re-names as Astound Broadband.
>> There could be some brief internet ser4vice disruptions  between Feb 
>> 27th and March 9th.
>> *Astound Broadband Powered by RCN <astound at connect.astound.com 
>> <mailto:astound at connect.astound.com>>*
>>  I am posting to our group in case other provider satellites could be 
>> affected as well.
>> Marty Kafka

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