[xnaron]

Just me or outage in Alberta now?

Edit by 57 - Weather outages can be caused by poor weather over your area, or poor weather over the BTV Uplink facility, located in Toronto. This thread is to track outages that affect the entire country due to weather or other problems at the uplink.

Please see and use the links in post 11 for Toronto radar if you have an outage. Please also report the amount of time that your location was "down".

Outage Dates:

June 27
July 11
July 28
August 15
August 22

If you wish to find other previous similar threads, do a search for "rain snow fade". If your location was down for significantly longer than other people indicate in this thread, then you should consider re-aiming your dish and/or getting a larger dish.

 

[manglegrat]

Nope, me too. Calgary.

Nothing but white clouds and plenty of blue in the sky here, not particularly heavy.

I also just trimmed the crap out of a tree that's in the line of the dish, just in case it was that, with no change.

 

[Install_Guy]

Nope....intermittent signal on BellTV for me too....thought it was my equipment!

 

[moosefan]

Out in NS too. Read there are Thunderstorms in Toronto...maybe the cause?

 

[The Winger]

I am having the same issues here in Calgary, signal cutting out frequently the past hour or so.

 

[sillyrabbit]

Same here in Montreal - clear skies, thought it was my equipment.
Good to hear.

 

[lens300]

Down here in Niagara Falls, Ont. Thought my dish had moved or something.

 

[ddrolet]

Just had an outage here in Vancouver too.

 

[lens300]

It came back on for a few minutes now it back off. No signal at all

 

[Costa]

Confirmed outage not too long ago in sw ontario.

 

[57]

Whenever you have an outage, check the radar for Toronto. There have been extremely heavy rains here, with more to come, which affect the single uplink that BTV uses.

http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=WKR

http://www.intellicast.com/National/Radar/Current.aspx?location=USMI0127&enlarge=true&animate=true

 

[Ex Agent EV]

I hasàd the same issue earlier on...signal was on off. Taught it was the electrical plug where the power inserter is connected that had issue (as I used to have issues with that plug). After plugging the receiver in another plug issue stopped...but now I guess it's just that Bell fixed whathever problem they had!

Did anybody call Bell on this? If so, what was their explanation?

 

[moojy]

Called and they said do a check switch and all was back to normal

 

[markb]

Simple explanation, major storm went through Toronto so the uplink signal was down for every customer temporarily, usually if the signal is gone on a clear day there is probably a storm in Toronto.

 

[Anteater]

Down here too for a while, went up and down with the signal maxing out at around 55% (usually 90+). Works fine now though.

 

[tofinoguy]

99.99% Signal Availability Year Round, huh?

525,600 minutes in a year.
99.99% means signal should only be unavailable for 53 minutes a year.
Looks like they used up most of that today.

 

[kenneth]

Bell only has 1 upload link. If Toronto get a thunderstorm the whole country is down. most U.S satelite providers have more than 1 uplink. But this is Canada where nobody complains.

 

[Bent But]

But this is Canada where nobody complains

Some Canadians do by choosing to go with ABB - Anybody but Bell.

Running a satellite business with no proper simsub software, a single uplink and an accumulated debt of over $1.2B doesn't do much for the consumer let alone the shareholders

 

[hugh]

Anybody know how long Bell was down for yesterday and from what time to what time?

and

99.99% Signal Availability Year Round, huh?

Does Bell actually advertise 99.9%?

 

[57]

They do advertize an on-stream time that they do not meet. I read this a while back and just shrugged since it's blatantly false. Here's the link - 1/2 way down the page under "the best HD", which could also be argued is false, depending on how you define "best":

Digital television you can count on - 99.99% signal availability on our satellites year-round

http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpTv_AIO_Pkg.page?INT=TV_tvhmpg_BAN_besthdq2_Acq_90410_em_en

They obviously exceed 53 minutes of outage per year! They have one too many 9s in their advertizing, so they're off by an order of magnitude. My estimate would be that with rain/snow fade for the customer and for BTV's uplink, that the average customer would have roughly 99.9% availability. Someone needs to take BTV up on this false advertizing.

It would help Hugh if someone could post the times that BTV was down yesterday. A search for "rain fade" or "thunderstorm*" would probably find previous similar threads...

Edit - I just reread their statement. Perhaps their satellites are available 99.99% of the time, but due to rain/snow fade the customer and BTV cannot make use of the satellite signal availability....