BTV 2010 Outages Thread (There goes the 99.99% availability)

  • Thread starter Thread starter fussy
  • Start date Start date
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.
 
OK... I was ready to sit down and tune in to see how the soccer final was going, and there went the signal !! I am on SD only. This was around 4:15 EST. It is currently 30 degrees and sunny. Not a cloud in the sky. WTF !! On a hunch, I checked the Weather Network (on internet) and they say severe storms in Toronto. Is this causing anyone else grief ? :confused:
 
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.
 
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.
 
Nope....intermittent signal on BellTV for me too....thought it was my equipment! :confused:
 
Lost the game for about 1 minute and a half. A short time, yes, but enough for me to make some phone calls tomorrow and move to digital cable.
 
lol, the storms were HORRIBLE here. If you're going to whine that much, go, Rogers wants you!

The sky is clearing up, hail is moving out and all of that. So should be fine now.
 
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
 
Anybody know how long Bell was down for yesterday and from what time to what time?

and



Does Bell actually advertise 99.9%?
 
Just checked again, and now I have some channels back. Of course, the ones carrying the soccer are still not working. :confused: Murphy's Law... Seems that my friend who has HD is experiencing some signal breakup, but is still is getting a signal. I guess it only affects just us cheap skates who still have SD.
 
The pop-up thunderstorms that went through were pretty localized and brief (there was hardly anything at Yonge & Lawrence). May affect one satellite more than the other?

Looking at the radar, there may be more to come in a few hours...

http://www.intellicast.com/National/Radar/Current.aspx?location=USMI0127&enlarge=true&animate=true
 
I am having the same issues here in Calgary, signal cutting out frequently the past hour or so.
 
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":



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.... ;)
 
I would say that I lost signal about 3 or 4 times; each outage lasting about 10 minutes. In around the time of 4:30 to 6:00 MDT.

It's also worth noting that at least one of my 9242s re-booted during this period. I was working in the garage and the "please wait" message went to snow; and I only get snow when a receiver reboots. My fiancee said about that time the receiver made the noise it normally makes when it re-boots.
 
Thats what way I would interpret their claim, same as airlines bragging about being on-time, I think they exclude weather delays.
 
Back
Top