Sun Outages Can Cause Brief TV Outages

February 28, 2024

CFU TV customers may experience brief outages on TV networks due to sun outages. 

What are sun outages?

Each spring and fall, cable companies experience sun outages. For a period of about a week, the sun causes solar interference to all geostationary satellite signals. As the sun's path across the sky gets lower each day, there are times when it is in a direct line behind a communication satellite that is sending signals to a receiving satellite dish here on earth. When the dish antenna is looking into the sun, the interference from the sun overrides the signals from the satellite. This is when a sun outage occurs.

Sun outages occur during the months of February/March and September/October and can last as long as 15 minutes a day and take place over a period of 10 days. The effects of a sun outage vary in degree from minimal to total outage throughout the 10 day period. Once it reaches its peak, the interference will gradually decrease becoming less noticeable each day after.

Unfortunately, there is nothing CFU can do to prevent sun outages from occurring. Each satellite that we receive signals from will experience this interference at times. 

Approximate dates of the outages will be from February 28 through March 2. Times and durations for individual channels will vary.