Each year there is a phenomenon known as Sun outages, Solar outage, or Solar satellite interference. Such Solar-based outages occur twice per year. During these outages, television signals may experience some interference.
What is a Sun outage?
When the sun is in a direct line with a satellite, solar radiation emitted by the sun interferes with satellite signals and causes a brief outage in reception. It is when the sun passes directly behind satellites transmitting video signals these brief outages occur.
How often do sun outages occur, and how long they last?
Sun outages occur every year, in Fall and Spring, and last approximately about a week each time. Fall outages for Wave customers are expected between October 5th and 14th, 2020. And could affect satellite signal for 10 minutes, or so, each day in this period.
What kind of interference can I expect?
You may experience a pixelated video, video freezing, or audio distortions during the sun outage.
How can I tell if interference is caused by a sun outage or a service issue?
The Sun outage happens only during the day between 11 am and 5:30 pm— if there is no sun, there will be no interference. The outage is usually brief, lasting 5 minutes to 15 minutes. These outages only affect television service and do not affect the internet or phone.