Did the recent Solar Flare cause Problems with your Hi Tech Devices or Services?

I live on the eastern side of the USA, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park area. I am accustomed to waking up very early before work, so sleeping in on the weekend for me is waking up at 6am EST.

This morning when I got up around 5.45a EST I logged into my laptop and turned the television on. After 10-15mins of checking emails, etc, I began getting the message 'Internet Explorer Cannot Display this Web Page'.

I thought it might be nothing big, but after hunting the problem down, I found that it was an issue with my internet service. As soon as I noticed this I tried to go into the interactive troubleshooting guide in my cable service guide, to fix the internet problem (AT&T).

When I did this my cable service crapped out. I was able to call through to customer service, using my cell phone, since my AT&T phone service was dead along with TV and internet. The message I got let me know that the entire area was experiencing full loss of all services added to this was the incedibly poor signal and call quality.

My cell phone - it is a good motorola slide phone that uses "StraightTalk" service from wal-mart - the service could possibly account for the very poor reception, though I have never had poor service here before and now the phone works fine.

I don't know how big the area is, which is why I am here writing this now.

Did any of you notice any significant disruptions of service or failure of hi-tech devices in the early hours today (EST)?

I wonder if this is possibly caused by the solar flare that was expected to arrive today?

Ha, I'm actually browsing new topics here looking for any info on cell towers being down outside of the reported Los Angeles area. (We're on the Eastside of Seattle)

abclocal.go.com.../local/los_angeles&id=8366972

My husband accidentally set off our security alarm about an hour ago, and we got an error message on our panel that said 'check long range communication.' When we called ADT, the rep said that their GSM network/cell phone towers are not working properly in Washington, Oregon, California, Iowa, and South Carolina and all ADT customers are affected. There is no ETA on when it will be fixed at the moment either.

it made me butt dial my GF when she was out of town...now im gonna get long distance charges why couldnt our towers be down!

We had a power surge about an hour ago in Idaho but power came back on instantly.

reply to post by esteay812

Hopefully this is unrelated, but we lost utility power between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM MDT (add 1 hour for CDT) in very rural North-Central Colorado. The power company's, Poudre Valley REA, recorded message stated that this outage covered a wide area of Colorado. I also lost internet access until just moments ago, but this was most likely due to the failure of the phone companies backup power supply. Cell coverage does not reach this part of the mountains so I cannot comment on cell phone interruptions.

Best regards,
Z

No problems here. Phone works, electricity works, and internet works.

reply to post by sInSeattle


Thank you for your reply! That is pretty coincidental in a way. I mean I fully expected to not hear of similar situations until several posts into the thread and the first one reports problems on the other side of the country at or near the same time!

Great feedback too, if this did cause the problems we are seeing it seems that multiple service areas and multiple companies are affected, making it appear to be a problem spanning that has affected tons of people in may different areas.

Hopefully we can get some more reports in here to substantiate this connection or to prove it is just a crazy coincidence so far.

reply to post by outandopen


I wouldn't rule that out as being a possible effect, but not sure I could take it as a real reaction to a solar flare. If a lot of people report similar occurrances in many different areas, then we could consider it as much more likely to be a result of a solar flare impact.

Thanks for your post!

reply to post by DrZrD


ok, well this is much more strange than what I expected to hear this early on in the thread. Seems like there is indeed a lot of people experiencing different tech problems today. I am assuming this doesn't happen to you all everyday - or even very frequently?

thank you for your reply!

reply to post by Manhater


Hi Manhater, can you tell us where you are located? I understand if you don't wanna, just curious. Also, is there anyone you can ask who may have been awake while you were asleep and may have seen something like this happen?

Thank you too, for your post!

reply to post by esteay812

We get more than our fair share of power outages in rural Colorado but ALMOST NEVER on sunny, warm, dead calm days like this morning. I can only remember a few times in 20 years that a outage occurred under similar, nice-day-nothing-going-on, conditions.

Best regards,
Z

I have AT&T also.
Everything is working fine today,but my internet went down Tuesday night,then by Wed. morning my cable went out also.
As I was getting ready to call AT&T,I noticed one of there techs at my neighbors house,so I walked over there and asked him about my service.
He replied that there was an issue in the area,and was working on it.
After he left,and my service was still down I called it in.
The next day,another tech came to my house,and after some troubleshooting,told me someone had disconnected it from the main box down the road.

Anyways,here is a link to the current warnings from the solar flares.
www.swpc.noaa.gov...

reply to post by DrZrD


That is good to know for sure. Gd forbid anything, such as a car accident, occurred causing this to happen.

reply to post by kdog1982


Thanks for your reply.

What area do you live in? and what was the time when you woke up (if you may have been asleep during the time frame in question)?

Also, I don't know about you, but I must say that AT&T is by far the worst media provider I have ever had! HD movies, ondemand or on regular programming, freeze up 45mins-1hr in and most of the time you can even get it to play after that happens. The phone service is horrible as well! Voicemail gets delivered 2-3 days after it is received. Incoming calls do not make it through about 20% of the time and when they do the caller ID only works about 50% of the time...

I am going back to Charter at the end of this billing cycle, haha, but really... I am

Everything is normal in Ohio

reply to post by mnmcandiez


Awesome, good to know and thanks for the reply. Everything is back to normal here and has been for several hours now, but was curious if this happened to others and if so, where their location is and alsol could it be directly related to the Solar Flare?

So far it seems to be about 50/50 plausible/coincidence

i'm in ontario canada,and my internet,satalite t.v,and my home phone have been experienceing interuptions for the last 12 to 16 hours. my service for all 3 is bell canada. i was wondering if the solar flares were doing this also!

reply to post by reficul


I have to ref, it appears there may be a connection with the Solar Flare and the problems being experienced by others.

Maybe we can get enough information to come to some sort of comclusion... or maybe there will be a press release telling us that the problems are/were Solar Flare related.

No

reply to post by OptimusSubprime


No what? There are a few questions and 'no' simply doesn't articulate an answer well enough to discern your implications from on question to another.

Thanks for your reply and adding so much to the thread

really though, thanks for taking the time to click reply and get involved with th thread.