Cable/Internet/Phone is malfunctioning, cable company says can not fix, "Solar Activity"

I am in ABQ right now and have been for the last 2 years.
Bad idea for those who would like to relocate! (I'm originally from Manhattan)
Anyway the last couple weeks when I received a phone call at my home, on my land line, from a cell, either the person trying to reach me or myself couldn't be heard and vice versa through the other phone. Sometimes when either of us would call back it would happen again and switch (they could hear me but I could not hear them). This has been happening with almost everyone I know with a cell phone out here.
Well a week ago my tv's connected to digital converters started to go crazy. There would be ghost images, snow and even mirrored picture effects happening constantly.
I am not home much but today I took off and decided to call the cable company (not satellite) for some answers. Since they screwed up my billing for the past 6 months straight, I have a direct contact in the customer loyalty department and also free HBO and Starz.
Once I explained the problem to the man I spoke to several times before he told me he would first attempt to fix the problem. After resetting the cable box, modem and tv's with no avail he told me to hold for one minute. When he came back on he said verbatim, 'I have taken the phone off record and I am not supposed to tell you this. There is solar activity interrupting service in your area that we cannot fix.' I said, 'Really!' (Because I am a fan of this site I thought someone would have posted something to this effect and I would have noticed.) He then went on to tell me there are going to be more problems in the future of this nature they cannot prevent.
To keep it short, is anyone else experiencing these issues recently?
Should I believe this stranger?
Or is this a desperate attempt to keep me from switching to satellite tv?

reply to post by AnteBellum


I could be wrong, but I think that the cable providers actually use satellites to receive some of their programming...

maybe their satellites are being interfered with by the recent solar activity?

I don't doubt that it would be something along these lines.

Today our internet has been intermittant at best, and myself, brother, and other friends and family have had, out of nowhere, computer issues to the point of hardware replacement being needed.

I'm a hardware tech and I know how strange of a "coincidence" that kind of thing is

reply to post by AnteBellum


I know what you mean, I live near Toronto Canada and lately my cable has really been acting up. The sound on it keeps flickering on and off constantly, about a second apart. This happens maybe once or twice a day. At first I thought it was the company I was with, but this has never happened before. It has me thinking, that's for sure!

reply to post by AnteBellum


Wait, I swear I saw a post a few days ago saying there would be solar activity affecting those exact things you mention this week, or rather, it said it would cause the internet to be "slower"..

But yes, believe him. Solar activity affects electronics more than people believe.

2012? All it'll be is a period of massive solar flares that'll cause our technology to break and cause trillions in damage and take up to a decade to fully repair. Stuff like this, think of it like preparation

reply to post by JacKatMtn


How come I haven't heard anything about this?
And why would this guy have to take me off the recorded call to tell me this?

I have never appreciated the monopoly cable companies have in the USA but the way the man was speaking was so clandestine it made me wonder what his motives were. . .

My cable internet has degraded recently. I had a splitter in line with one side going to my cable box and the other to my modem. It got so bad that my modem stopped functioning correctly. As soon as I plugged my modem directly in to an outlet my signal was back. But, I still notice that my overall speed of internet just isn't there.

reply to post by AnteBellum


I am just working off memory...

I use satellite TV now and have for the better part of a decade.. but when I was a cable tv user, I remember dropping off payments to the local cable provider and their compound was loaded with sat dishes.. it was how the received the premium channels, they then sent them through the cable to the consumers..

It may be completely different these days since the advent of fiber optic cables? I don't know, just putting that out there in case it is still relevant to the situation..

reply to post by AnteBellum


Sounds like you've been given the brush off to me because they couldn't be bothered to investigate properly.

Have a word with neighbours if you can to verify that they have had similar problems at similar times.

KEEP A RECORD.

Something like "solar activity" cannot affect just you if there are others in the area who don't suffer....surely?

Armed with days, dates and info from others you can maybe get something done about it. What's the chance of changing providers rather than just the method you are supplied, that would get some action perhaps.

I sympathise with your predicament as I have suffered in the past with bad ADSL internet. Took years to sort out and it was all down to a shotgun pellet lodged in one of the lines to my house, and right at the start of the problem I told them the line was old and needed replacing.

19 new telephone poles....new sockets in the house....new junction boxes....LAST (and about 10th visit by technicians) they replaced the line.

Sometimes I think they cannot stand a customer telling them their job or pointing out problems.

WE are the customer, WE are not meant to be smart.

Still....after the whole new infrastructure everything works fine now.

Hope you get sorted and keep at them. Don't let them fob you off with the solar activity nonsense unless they show some evidence. Good luck.

My cellphone and internet is working normally. So I believe yours is simply a problem that can be fix with professional help

Yesterday my internet was okay and today it just flat out sucks! It reminds me of being on a 56k dial-up in 1989 or something. Cable is the same way...Netflix won't even download a movie, and with ATS doing all it's upgrades and maintenance, I think it's almost impossible to post...but here goes!

Comcast in Minneapolis Minnesota is totally broken up today.

More jacked than usual I should say.

I have worked for a cable company for the past 10 years and solar activity has always been a common interruption. I should also mention that I have never heard of a agent being able to "turn off recording" that is BS we don't control that from our phones.

This year with all the sun spots generating and peeking by 2013 means we will have to get use to the tiling and pixeling on our TVs.

For the past 3-4 days or so my internet has been extremely slow. I cannot get a single video to play properly, they all just show basically 1 frame every 2 seconds, all jerky and unwatchable, pages are slow to load, etc. No idea why, never had problems like this with my ISP before. I have not bothered to call them, and I'm not saying this has anything to do with solar activity, just figured I'd throw it out there.

Edit to say: I am in the northwest btw.

Originally posted by Rhain
I have worked for a cable company for the past 10 years and solar activity has always been a common interruption. I should also mention that I have never heard of a agent being able to "turn off recording" that is BS we don't control that from our phones.

This year with all the sun spots generating and peeking by 2013 means we will have to get use to the tiling and pixeling on our TVs.

Ive worked in the same setting, and the sprint QA was the same thing. It was controlled by the QA guys, often times random and completely out of our control.

And yeah, ive seen lots of the "blocky things" as I call them in the past and never attributed them to solar flares, but makes sense now. Damn blocky things.

PS If the caller did mention he stopped recording, and was in fact recorded saying that at the call center I worked at, he would of been 1 infraction shy of a failed call by QA.

The solar activity index isn't particularly high. I think he was pulling your leg to get you off the phone.

Having no issues here, the wife says none at home either.

How exactly did the guy know that there will more like this in the future? Were they briefed by NASA of the incoming solar problems?

Originally posted by YourPopRock
Comcast in Minneapolis Minnesota is totally broken up today.

More jacked than usual I should say.

yep, it's been funky for the past two weeks. Wireless of course is really annoying at times.

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
reply to post by AnteBellum

 

I could be wrong, but I think that the cable providers actually use satellites to receive some of their programming...

maybe their satellites are being interfered with by the recent solar activity?

Yes, they do. Most of the broadcasters send their signals to the cable companies via satellite.

I call bullcrap especially on the internet. It doesnt go thru a satellite link pure coax fiber in the catv field and Albuquerque (sp?) is probably a pretty up to date area. There are solar disruptions twice annually and now is not the time its spring and fall you can check here. en.wikipedia.org... Basically a major solar flare could disrupt your video briefly but it would be at least nationwide if not hemisphere wide and wouldnt last over 30 min.

I know techs who work nationwide catv,I'll do some checking but I thinks you been fed a line of bull and I've been doing catv over 25 yrs. :