Spring 2023 Sun Outages

Sun Fading Between the Rows of Solar Panels

It is time once again for a technical phenomenon called "sun outages", also called "solar outage" and "sun spots".

For a period of about 15 days, starting March 1st but not impacting us directly until approximately March 2nd, the sun will cause "solar interference" to all geostationary satellite signals we receive. As the sun's path across the sky gets lower each day, there are times when it is in a direct line behind a communication satellite that is sending signals to our receiving satellite. When the antenna is looking into the sun, the interference from the sun overrides the signals from the satellite, thus causing the sun outage.

Sun outages can typically last as long as 15 minutes per channel and take place each day over a period of 15 days. The effects of sun outages vary in degree from minimal to total outage throughout the 15 day period. Once it reaches its peak, the interference will gradually decrease becoming less noticeable each day after.

Our anticipated site-specific event windows are between 1-5PM EDT from 3/2-3/6 based on the information we have received.

"It's quite literally a cosmic phenomenon in our industry."

Lee Miller, Director of Network Engineering at i3 Broadband

As always, should you experience any type of technical difficulty, our 5-star customer service and support teams are on hand to assist you via email at support@i3broadband.com or telephone at (309) 689-0711.

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