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

My landline phone has been acting up today, and my dsl internet has been for about 2 weeks now. About 6 weeks ago, I had lightning strike near my home and it blew my phone box to bits. After they installed a new one, I haven't had any problems until about 2 weeks ago with my internet being extremely slow. I live in Northwest Florida. I'm told that with our weakened magnetic field, a lighter solar flare may cause unexpected problems more so than it would years ago. I don't know if it's true....

Originally posted by wavemaker
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?

Well the funny thing is, he might of been in a way lol

Training agents on the phone was an ongoing experience at my call center, and things that affected our business was trained in those sessions to educate agents in case customer questions came up and to help them in call flow. I think that with increased solar activity which could affect their customers, whom are all over the internet and read stuff about it, its only logical to add that info to training your employees for the inevitable questions that pop up.
Personally I think the agent was a bit assumptive and should of used more tact if thats how the call was handled. I seriously doubt he had much info on the true reason for the disruption in service.

reply to post by Rhain


When I worked for Dell (in Gold Tech Support) we recorded our own calls and uploaded them to the servers ourselves after every call. Dell randomly recorded calls on their own from time to time as part of their quality control auditing, but I'm just saying that at least one other world-class call center DOES have agents record calls on their own.

How that adds to conversation, I dunno.

I also remember reading a short while ago that there is a certain few days out of the year (or range of years) where the cable company's incoming programming satellite feed is aligned with the sun and overwhelmed by solar interference. I would think this would only impact TV, since most data comms trunk out via fiber and copper lines, and thus, would not be afflicted by dish alignment/interference issues.

Very interesting though. From what I've been reading for the last few years suggest that we will see more of this as we approach Solar Max...

Only thing unusual, (but not really) is a NEO passby at 0.9 AU, but that's today.

You cable guy is feeding you bulls**t.

I have been on cable long enough that i remember seeing the red glow of the northern light down here in the high desert of Calif.

That was at the last solar maximum. and i had no problems with cable.

The only problem i ever had with cable was when they first put it in and it rained.
One day the cable repairmen came out and i handed him a can of electrical silicone spray and ask him to spray inside all the connector from the pole down to the house.
Never had a problem since,

I noticed one neighbor had cable problem a couple months ago and the first thing the cable guy died was spray all the connector with silicone spray

reply to post by AnteBellum


I think the customer service rep. may have been pulling your leg. Although it is possible that solar activity can cause disruptions, I don't see why they would make it seem like their giving you some hush-hush top secret info. It is a fact that ALL cable companies receive a majority of their channels from satellite signals-hence the possibility of solar disruptions. But unless the representative actually called you from their personal cell phone there would be no way for them to stop recording the call. Dispatchers and cust. service reps. do not have a record on/off switch at their desks or on their extensions. Hence when you call you hear the message stating that "this call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes". This is so corporate Quality Control can monitor you as well as the Rep.- their employee. More than likely they told you that just to get you off the phone, especially if they have already dealt with you/your account in the past- i.e. were sorry for any inconvenience how about some free HBO and Stars!
Let me ask you- since you have been having these problems have they sent a Technician/Cable guy out to your house? The problem may be in your house, such as old wiring (RG59), loose fittings, too many splitters or bad splitters, you may have a bad ingress/egress(signal leakage), You may have a faulty modem, The aerial or underground line to your house (Dropline) may need to be replaced, or you may just have a low signal issue.
It could also be a problem with the Tap (at the telephone pole where your cable line comes in). Have you talked to any of your neighbors to see if they are having the same problems?
Sorry to be so long winded but these are all possibilities to consider. If I were you I would make an appointment for them to send a technician out to your house to troubleshoot the problem. They should do this free of charge to you. Be sure to ask them to send a contractor, they tend to have more experience with troubleshooting (in-house techs tend to be lazy). After that the problem may be fixed, and at the very least you'll get some more free perks from them for your inconvenience.
I guess it's pretty obvious by now that I used to be a Cableguy Anyway, Good Luck! I hope my advice helps. Cheers.

good morning all!! just for your interest I thought i'd point out these other current threads, as you said you had not seen anything else posted about this....

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...


peace x

Interesting that you should start this thread.
I have just come back from a 2 day internet shortage. Doesn't sound much, and it only seemed to affect my household's phone and internet service... but I'm with TalkTalk in the UK. Never had any problems with them before. The phone our end would ring once, then cut out. I decided to test it by using my mobile to phone the landline, and it turned out from the callers POV, it was ringing normally, but to use it sounded like they had hung. Today we had 2 different engineers come round at separate times, each one previously claiming they had fixed the problem, it was a nightmare!! They said it was a problem with the "interchange".

So yes, though it is fixed now, I know there have been many problems in our area. Here is a very short article from our local newspaper on the issue 2 weeks ago when 64,000 phone lines/ numbers were affected:
Evening Star
It's the only internet version I can show for proof. If my scanner worked I would post a picture of our newspaper version of the article. The phones were down for 2 hours, with BT claiming a "major fault at the Ipswich exchange".
Also, at work this week, the signal to our phone lines has still been very bad, with many conversations seeming to be 'cracked up', and many clients are getting frustrated, though many have said "I know, they've been terrible all week!"

I really wouldn't be surprised if something more sinister was going on. It all seems too much to happen in one go for our area.

reply to post by LunaStarr

Aahhh... yeah the old porting problem. I used to be stuck at some jobs for hours when it was a interchange issue. See- when someone wants to keep their phone # and switch to a different Company the old company always drops the ball. Sometimes it's sour grapes over losing another customer to the competition, sometimes it's due to incompetence. If the phone # is not properly ported, or if it's only partially ported, it will cause a number of problems. Ranging from your house line not ringing when someone calls from a certain cell provider, to one way conversations and everything inbetween. I'm not saying this is the cause of Antebellum's recent problems with her phone, but it is a possibility. The VOIP phone system really is still in it's infancy stage, it's only been in NY since 2005-ish. The main problem is the cable companies do not value their techs, especially the contractors. A classic case of too many chiefs, and not enough indians. RAINDOG OUT

Days before the Japan EQ me and my friends had trouble with connection speed...we play online together and used to all have ping like crazy..and with different ISP's

also Youtube was crap

Location : Malta

but i'n not experiencing anything unusual atm....so i must be on the other part of the Globe

I'd like to report that I am experiencing these problems as well in Wales, UK. For the past two to three weeks, our landline rings, and the caller can't hear us. It's not a problem with our phones. I will start to track if it is happening with incoming mobile calls only. We lost all phone line connection last week for 5 hours. Additionally, several Sky Satellite childrens channels were not getting a signal or were breaking up last night. I know that each of these problems can happen every so often, but seriously, my husband and I have been wondering about all of these problems happening in the same time period... Then I see this post... It makes me wonder if the holes in the magnetosphere are already contributing to these problems from very mild ( to date) solar flares and storms. If this is the case, the future may not look so rosy as we approach solar maximum.

Originally posted by AnteBellum
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?

Interesting...if anything, i love your signature!