Sun Outages To Affect TV Service In March

Hardy OneNet’s TV signal may be affected briefly in the first week of March by sun outages. A sun outage is an interruption or distortion of geostationary satellite signals caused by solar radiation. The problem occurs when the sun is in direct line with a communication satellite and the sun’s radiation overwhelms the satellite signal. In the Northern Hemisphere, sun outages typically occur in late February or early March before the March equinox and in late September or early October after the September equinox. Sun outages are common and can be expected at these particular times of year. The first period for sun outages is expected to begin about February 28 and likely will last through about March 11. During the day from about 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. is the most common time for sun outages to occur. A sun outage can last for several minutes, during which time your TV signal may experience interference with picture and/or sound quality. Estimates have the current sun outages lasting anywhere from two minutes to about 13 minutes. The channels affected depend on which satellites are being impacted by the solar radiation and what channels OneNet receives from those satellites. Sun outages do not affect Internet or telephone service.

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