XM Outage Continues to Second Day
XM subscribers were dealing with a second day of service problems Tuesday as the company finally acknowledged an outage and offered an explanation for the lack of signal many were experiencing, especially across the Eastern US and Canada.
According to subscribers, the outages began around noon ET Monday and included either full loss of signal reception, or significant degradation in signal quality. Reports indicated the problem was nationwide, although the most significant problems existed on the East coast.
A BetaNews check in Eastern Pennsylvania showed company radios still working, although the signal was weak and quite susceptible to loss due to obstructions such as trees and overpasses.
XM was still not responding to requests for comment Tuesday, and the only information on the service outage and its reasons were made available in a statement posted on the company Web site.
“The problem occurred during the loading of software to a critical component of our satellite broadcast system, which resulted in a loss of signal from one of our satellites. We expect normal service to resume midday [Tuesday],” the notices reads.
Which XM satellite was affected is as yet unknown, although it is believed one of the newer satellites lost its "downlink," which delivers the signals to radios on the ground. The problem also took out the service’s terrestrial repeaters.
2:20 pm ET May 22, 2007 - XM says service has now been fully restored. "XM Satellite Radio has resumed normal levels of service for customers who experienced outages or significantly degraded service starting yesterday," the company wrote on its site. "After you turn on your XM radio, please allow five to ten minutes to reacquire the XM signal."