Saturday 12 Sept 2009 - Satellite Services Interrupted

[satandpcguy]

During the evening of Saturday 12th September 2009, many channels on the UK TV satellite system were unavailable.

The list of channel affected is too big to mention all but the outage included:
Zone reality and related channels
Virgin 1
Sky premiere, Sky screen 2,
challenge +1hr
discvery realtime +1,
disney channel
dmax, euronews
history,
ESPN America,
ESPN Classic

According to reports this outage was due to failure for one of the four satellites providing UK TV. This was not an Astra satellite but Eurobird1.

During the evening the signals were fluctuating between on, off and very weak.

The signal and system was restored a few hours later. If you had any reordings during htis time then they may well have failed.

No offical statement from Eurobirds operatord has been made yet.

[satandpcguy]

A rason why this occurred

GlobeCast has been in constant contact with Eutelsat, the satellite operator since yesterday
evening and Eutelsat has confirmed that the satellite is currently unstable within its orbital
position. This is resulting in the fixed uplink antennas being unable to constantly transmit to
the satellite accurately causing intermittent loss to all services. GlobeCast are at this time
awaiting further information from Eutelsat who are working on resolving the issue as soon as
possible and as soon as we have further information, a further update will be provided