Why does Bell TV go off during heavy rain?

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rexpac

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Hi Guys,

NOt sure if this question has already been asked out there, but couldn't see a post.

The last few days in Toronto have been brutal in terms of lightning and insane amount of rain. Why is that, when the weather is really bad, Bell TV (i live in a condo) lose signal? It eventually comes back when the weather settles.
How come Rogers seem fine regardless of the weather. Is it because Rogers is Cable?
 
I've seen Rogers go out in heavy rain as well. It's not as common as it once was due to less use of satellite and ground microwave links. Rain absorbs the radio frequency signals that satellite uses. Therefore, satellite reception is lost during heavy rain. Some services are affected more than others. The system that Bell uses is more prone to signal loss from rain than others. The signal can also be lost during storms at Bell's uplink center in Toronto when local weather is clear. Signal loss can be reduced by using a larger dish.
 
A relatively small dish requires a "clean" connection through the atmosphere to receive a good signal from the satellite in orbit a few hundred kilometres above earth. This is almost always fine - but nevertheless, satellite service is prone to interferance as a result of strong atmospheric conditions. I'm in a condo as well, my signal strength is normally 100, but when a strong lightning storm comes through I'll lose the signal. That's rare - it just so happens we've been subjected to two very heavy storms in the last couple of weeks.

Cable service isn't immune to weather problems, but generally it is more reliable than satellite becuase it's a hard connection directly from your house back to the company's office. They still use satellites too, but those are those a good bit more robust than the little dishes found attached to peoples' roofs.
 
If you do a search of this site for "snow fade" or "rain fade" you'll find plenty of threads on the topic.

There is a difference between the rain fade that affects your dish and the fade that affects the main downlink/uplink too. Sometimes when there's a major storm in the GTA, the entire BTV system is affected.

Rogers is mostly unaffected by this, especially the "home fade" version since there is no dish at your home and "downlink/uplink also" since most of their signals are received via fibre, not satellite.
 
Heavy rain cause attenuation at those ultra high frequencies.
Similar analogy: if it rain heavy, your view is more limited in range.
 
Try using a 30 inch or larger dish... doing so may not totally eliminate rain fade but it'll sure cut down on the time the signal is lost.
 
It's been nice out west but we still get rain fade from Bell's one and only uplink in Toronto. :(
Even a 36 inch dish won't help in this case either.
 
With satellite, there should be minimal outages if you equipment is properly installed and aligned.

On average, I would guess that there are outages:
Uplink (Toronto) weather issues: 0-2 a year
Home weather issues: 3-5 a year

These range in length of time from 30 seconds to 20 minutes. Often you may not even be aware since you are watching/recording at the time. Rain and/or snow are the typical cause.

Cable does have outages and that was my original reason for switching to satellite 20+ years ago. Cables get cut, poles go down, the cable feeds can (at least used to) come in via a satellite or microwave source which can "go down" for weather reasons.

Bottom line, neither system is perfect. There are tings you can do to minimize teh effects with satellite though (larger dish, proper alignment, etc), but little you can do for cable (mayb bury your local wires).
 
With cable, this would depend on your location and whether you have underground wires to your home. Even though my wire is above ground, I believe I've only had 1-2 cable outages total in the 21 years I've been back in Toronto.

The cable was even on during several power failures because both Rogers and I have UPS and my PVR recorded programming during the (local area) power failure.

As you can see from this anecdotal evidence, it can vary by location, but on average cable is more reliable than satellite for issues such as snow/rain fade. This may also depend on the cable provider. For example with Rogers they have UPS, and "dual routing node access", so that a single cable (other than the one from the node to your home) is unlikely to bring down the "system". Cable has to be reliable now that they're offering Home Phone service.

My cable is much more reliable than my power, although it's not quite as reliable as most POTS service has been - although even POTS goes down if a tree falls on your phone line.
 
Cogeco used to go out quite frequently in my area but since they recently upgraded things it's been ok. We were always getting pixelation or outages. We haven't lost cable in quite a while unless the power goes completely out in which case I have other things to worry about. :)
 
Dosborne, I gotta disagree on your satelitte outages numbers. I've had Bell (evu) go out at the uplink twice this month. No rain at my end, but heavy rain in toronto.
and at least 3 times at my end with heavy rain during live vewing. 2 recordings were missing a piece (part of the recording is missing due to lost signal).
I suspect most outages go un-noticed, since we don't all watch tv 24 hours per day.
So, if you multiply your numbers by 8-12, they'd be closer to reality.
only 4 times for snow last winter, better than average.

I have a 33" dish on each sat and normally 90 to 100 on all transponders.
Bell's published outages numbers are very low, but they survey based on the average veiwer, and average veiwers watch less than 4 hours per day.
 
This Summer has seen me loose signal at least 3 or 4 times more than a regular Summer.

I have been using a pair of 90cm Dish's for the last 3 months too.
 
As stated, they are a guess based on my personal Bell TV reception for close to 10 years. They are also an approximate average, as I have gone a whole year without noticing any outage, some years are worse. I used to have an 18", then 2x24", but now have the standard 20" and have not had any serious issues. Again, some "outages" last seconds only, the wrost I've seen was aout 20 minutes. Your mileage may vary.

I was simply pointing out that "outages" can be affected by the user setup. They also can happen with cable (I used to live 3 blocks from Roger's head end in Ottawa and switched to satellite as my cable service was always going out). You are free to disagree as everyone has different experiences, viewing times, etc but you cannot say that my post is wrong as it is representative of what I have actually seen (or not seen in this case :) )
 
I have Rogers for internet and Bell for TV service. Poor signal on cable due to fault with the cable themselves, is likely much more common, and easily corrected with a phone call. I had poor signal a few years back, and they ran a new temp line within hours of my call. Since I have a PVR don't find the rain fade outages too annoying. I do however find snow fade annoying since it occasionally requires a brushing to clean off the dish/LNBF.

With satellite there are sometimes things you can do to mitigate the signal loss. With cable you might have to wait, but at least you don't have to trek into the backyard in a -15C snow storm in your pajamas and slippers :o.

I intentionally mounted the dish low enough (~7') that I can access it easily. Unfortunately where it is mounted is on a BUD pole about 40' from the backdoor! I feel sorry for those that have to mount their dish on the roof.
 
I originally switched to expressvu 10 yrs ago, because my cable service was so unreliable. Once in a while i'd get a notice about an outage for a planned 'upgrade'. Mostly, it would just quit, seemingly for no reason. When i called then they said system was under maintenance.
Then, there were the unplanned and unexplainable outages. Then they blamed the contractor who replaced the wiring in the building i lived in. The last straw was the signal degrading to the point of unwatchable snowy (analog) video, during extreme cold winter. Their poor amplifiers couldn't take the cold!!
That statrted all the billing arguments, I didn't like paying for Non-Service!!
I'd take the weather satelitte outages over cable anyday, at least we know there was a reason for the problems.

P.S. Dosborne, I didn't say you were wrong, I said i disagree. :) and don't get me started on mileage claims, that belongs in a different fourm!
 
Have to agree with dosborne, when I was on cable (for 6 years or so) with Rogers I would get an outages every month or two for unknown reasons. They tended to last at least 10 mins to several hours.

With BEV (4 years) it was monthly at first during any medium to heavy rain or heavy snow until they launched the second sat (3rd? 4th?) a couple years back. Since then it is only during the heaviest snow or heavy rain the I see an outage and it seems to be shorter in duration (half hour was the longest) and with PVR I just watch something else.

Maybe cable has gotten better too over the last 4 years but I tend to write off the outages as pretty equal between the services from my experience.
 
Back in my C Band days the only time there was issues was twice a year when the sun tracked [solar transit] along the Clarke belt and momentarily overpowered satellites.
C Band isn't affected by rain like Ku and Ka band is. This happens with all satellites including Bell and Shaw Direct so the only way Bell can brag about 2 outages a year is if it never rains or snows hard in Toronto. :rolleyes:
 
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