XM Users: Anyone lose signal today? What's up?

[hlthe2b]

I'm in Denver and I can't get either a satellite or terrestrial signal (I'm in an area with several land-based repeaters, so this is very unusual).

I see nothing on their website and can't get through to customer service. I exchanged antennas--nothing and tried two previously working receivers--nothing. Anyone else? :shrug:

[NightWatcher]

1. In South Georgia the signal was fading in and out

it sounded like I was near a parking garage or other tall buildings. That's weird.

[gollygee]

2. It keeps coming in and out

it's driving me crazy! I thought something was wrong with my radio. I'm in Michigan btw.

[Hersheygirl]

3. Having trouble with satelite feed,

The engineers are working on the problem. Out in all lower 48 states I am told.

[elfin]

4. Today is the launch of Air America 2.0

Have been listening via another radio station on the net. Have not tried their site - I prefer connecting elsewhere. It worked fine in my car earlier - but had to tune off because I do not like Lionel.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

5. yeah turned it on around noon, got intermittent signal since, mostly no signal n/t

nt

[grateful581]

6. Yeah, having problems in Salt lake City

It's annoying as hell.
From what I understand it is a nationwide problem.

There is a thread about it at XM411.com
http://www.xm411.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=650617#650617

Orbitcast is on it too
http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/breaking-is-xm-down.html

[hlthe2b]

8. Thx. From grateful's links:

UPDATE: Reportedly one of the satellites (SAT1) is down, and all of the repeaters are down due to a "software update." Some are sayingying that they were told the system is expected to be up within 2 hours, while others have heard that it will be fully restored in 2 days.

UPDATE 2: An XM Spokesman has provided this statement regarding the issue:

"We are experiencing a temporary degraded performance issue, which has affected some of our customers. We expect to return to normal service levels this evening."

http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/breaking-is-xm-down.html

Not extremely encouraging....:shrug:

[Buzz Clik]

7. Last night, my daughter was complaining about the signal.

dunno.

[irish.lambchop]

9. Got someone on the phone - finally -

said they were upgrading and that signal would be down for 15-60 minutes - this was a few hours ago. Am missing Randi.

[peaches2003]

11. XM customer service- dumb as toads

The first time this signal out for almost a day happened to me months ago I called XM Cust Svc. Big mistake. The girl told me I must have bought a defective receiver and take it back to the storeIt was not being caused by XM. I explained to her that I have THREE XMs, each bought at different times many months ago, and that they ALL couldn't be defective and ALL go out at the same time! 15 minutes later after having explained many times the rationale that what she was saying could not be true, she still didn't get it. They all finally came back on after XM finished whatever they were doing with the signal. Where do these cust svc people come from!

[hlthe2b]

13. PHone service today out of Jamaica

After holding for nearly an hour I had the pleasure of being informed that the notice of outage was on their website (it was not) and on the phone message--definitely NOT. For God's sakes, I was ON their phone line and had the pleasure of hearing their entire swill. There was NO message, yet this totally oblivous girl in Jamaica proceeded to try to tell me otherwise. :eyes:

[peaches2003]

18. I have about had it with XM

There cust service is bad enough as we have both experienced, but I do not like that they decide not to carry all the AAR shows, like Thom Hartmann, and substitute what they damn well wish to (Ed Schultz). Then again I've about had it with AAR also.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

10. Yup. Just Drivin Home From Work Now It Was Terrible. Frustrating Too. Ripple Was On By The Dead.

How often you friggin hear Ripple on the radio? Me? First time ever! Wouldn't ya know it, static every 5 goddamn seconds!

[NightWatcher]

20. Eyes Of The World was on Deep Tracks earlier and it kept acting up

I had to come home and listen to half of a concert to get the groove again. You never hear EOTW on the radio.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

21. Deep Tracks Is The One Ripple Was On Too I Believe.

That's why I'm diggin XM so far (newly acquired). I hear non-standard dead songs, moody blues songs, and on rock stations Queensryche songs, Iron maiden songs, etc. It's a treat for someone who is used to the same ole same ole on the radio, like the same doors songs, zep songs and ac/dc songs over and over and over ya know?

[tammywammy]

24. I love Deep Tracks

and Top Tracks too.

We listen to XM at work, so today pretty much just sucks.

[Liberal In Texas]

12. It's happening here in Dallas too. The terrestrial is completely out.

And the satellite keeps fading completely out.

It happens in my vehicle and in the house.

With all the reports here in this post, it is probably an XM problem.

[Az]

14. Jerry Falwell's spirit is blocking the signal

:D

[retread]

15. It looks as if they have lost one of the satellites for some reason. Reports

are it is sat #1 reasons/excuses vary.

http://www.xmfan.com/viewtopic.php?t=80511

[librechik]

16. Me too!

still out since about 1:30 pm Denver time

[hlthe2b]

36. damnn... still out at 6AM Mountain--17 hours and counting...

this must be a really big deal....:(

[hlthe2b]

17. Signal may be down for 2 DAYS, per info in post #8

Damn, damn, damn! Is this Falwell's revenge?

[GreenInNC]

19. Had problems in NC

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. Mine kept fading in and out

[Loge23]

23. Awful customer "service"

After looking in vain on their website for an email link, I finally found a 1-800 #.
After two attempts, I got a CSA on -- What an asshole!!
This sarcastic punk basically told me what I already know and offered no further information as to when I can expect a restoration of "service".
I guess this is what we will get when we have no alternative.

[hlthe2b]

25. Latest update posted on an XM forum:

All comments that follow are from the XM forum posters; take it for what it is worth:
XM #3 Suffers In Orbit Difficulty

After many rumors and a lot of speculation, it appears that one of XM Satellite radio's newer satellites (XM#3) is the one that had difficulty.

The good news is that it appears that software and a repositioning of the satellite will be able to correct the issue.

Wedbush Excerpt:

Wedbush confirmed with XMSR that its XM-3 satellite suffered an in-orbit difficulty earlier today. Firm learned that in order to fix this issue, XMSR had to perform a software upgrade on the satellite, which required the satellite to be re-oriented to be corrected. That process also reportedly required the satellite to stop broadcasting. XMSR has yet to issue a press release or post some sort of update on its website to its subscribers. Based on firm's experience, it is not common for broadcast satellites to stop broadcasting in order to be "fixed". Keep in mind, it is not uncommon for satellites to report yearly availability rates of 99.999%. Thus, this type of service disruption is a natural concern. Obviously, once the satellite resumes broadcasting and XMSR's service is back on track, their concerns would be resolved.

Position - Long XM


So, if this is correct, it wasn't a planned software upgrade. Something went wrong, and they called Tech Support. Tech Support said to install the latest patches and reboot. Isn't that what Tech Support always says? They probably didn't even care that it was a satellite and not a PC.


http://satellitestandard.blogspot.com/2007/05/xm-3-suffers-in-orbit-difficulty.html

http://www.xm411.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=31587&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=120&sid=aab2d971f3ede7d97932d00a41fb3784

[annarbor]

26. Thank you for this post

I was listening to Randi Rhodes and suddenly I began experiencing waves of black outs. I had washed the car earlier and assumed that I had disconnected my antennae. I cleaned it and re-attached it to the hood of my car to no avail. Nice to know that it's not my car's receiver!

I'll wait and see how it all sorts out.

Ann Arbor

[hlthe2b]

30. You're welcome... I hope folks will keep it kicked so we can

all see any updated info or if some regions are getting service back ahead of others... (is this possible, LOL?)

[Steph13]

27. Car unit works, home/work doesn't

Called about 4 HOURS ago, and they told me to wait an hour. If it still didn't work, to call back. I'm still on hold. JUST signed up, and am NOT impressed........ bunch of dolts.

(I'm in Phoenix, AZ)

[KatyaR]

28. And I thought it was the hazy cloudcover we have this afternoon.

I NEVER have problems with reception, so by the time I got home tonight, I was rather concerned. I hope they get this resolved soon--I'm rather spoiled by my XM, I have to say.

Thanks for the info.

[XOKCowboy]

29. So THAT'S what it is/was...

I was wondering why I was getting a nearly total blackout in downtown Seattle this afternoon. You expect some blockage but nothing like that.

[MiniMe]

31. I was having problems in the car too.

Hope they get it cleared up soon.

[hlthe2b]

32. XM's official statement (finally)

5/21 Service Degredation (I guess they need spell check)

You may be experiencing temporary degraded performance with your XM reception at the present time. XM is aware of the issue and working diligently to resolve it as soon as possible. We anticipate full signal strength will be restored by early Tuesday morning.

http://www.xmradio.com/notices/signaldeg.xmc

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

33. Minneapolis -- It faded in and out earlier this evening, thought it was my radio

or weather or trees. Guess not!

[Rosco T.]

34. No problems in West Texas, solid signal since 7am this morning. n/m

[hlthe2b]

35. Late PM XM update: If you have signal, be grateful.......

NEW YORK, May 21 (Reuters) - A software glitch cut service to an unspecified number of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.'s (XMSR.O: Quote, Profile , Research) customers on Monday, the company said.
"Some customers are not receiving a signal," said Chance Patterson, XM's vice president of corporate affairs. "We don't know the exact number, but some."

****************************************
comments that follow are from a seemingly informed poster at xm411.com :

I'm not buying the "software glitch" story.

This isn't XM's first time one of their birds dropped off-line. There was a outage several years ago. But, that happened during the very early Sunday morning hours and wasn't noticed by many. ( http://www.xm411.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2902 ) This current outage has both of the east coast transponders down. Those carry the "early" data streams used to feed their repeaters. This means their entire repeater network is also down.

The east coast bird has been off-air for over 9 hours, so this is clearly not a minor glitch. And for some dumb reason, XM left both of their in-orbit spares (XM-1 & XM-2) parked in the western slot. Hopefully they they can deliver on their claim to have XM-3 resuscitated early Tuesday. Otherwise this has the potential to become a worst case failure scenario.
its not a minor glitch, its a major one...of course.

XM was applying/had applied a software patch to their off-line secondary control systems, one that had already been applied to the primary control systems and was thus already uploaded and applied to Sat 3.

for some unknown reason, the off-line secondary system was caused to come online and supercede the primary system, and for some unknown reason it tried to re-install the patch to Sat 3. subsequently, for some unknown reason, the patch caused Sat 3 to puke and more-or-less give itself a blue screen of death (for lack of better terms).

to recover, they need to hard re-boot the Sat, re-aim it towards the western Sats, recalibrate and resync it, hope it performs whichever I/O tests it needs to pass, and then re-aim it to the pretty dishes on the back porch, while at the same time debugging the ground system that threw everything into chaos to begin with. hopefully, when thats debugged and operation again, they will then reconnect Sat 3 with its ground source and everyone will be happy again.

XM switches between their primary and secondary systems fairly often as a continutity test, with little or no consequence to the broadcast satellite or terrestrial signal. this time, obviously, it either wasn't planned or it was done by accident without both systems operating as independent mirrors of each other.
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