Satellite Glitch Leaves Northern Canada In the (Internet) Dark 282
zentigger writes "At approximately 06:36 EDT Thursday, October 6, 2011, the Anik F2 satellite experienced an attitude control issue and lost earth lock, affecting C, Ku and Ka services. The satellite went into safety mode and moved from pointing to the earth to pointing to the sun. This has put most of Northern Canada in the dark as all internet and phone services come in over F2."
Re:Don't worry, they're Canadians (Score:2, Interesting)
I would guess as to not interfere with other satellite signals. The antennae are design to broadcast in a certain pattern.
Re:Don't worry, they're Canadians (Score:4, Interesting)
They're probably only 10 people, anyway.
I was one of the '10' the last time [wikimedia.org] this happened.
I was living in Iqaluit [wikimedia.org] at the time, but was actually in flight to Pond Inlet [wikimedia.org] at the northern tip of Baffin Island when the outage occurred. It was a very bizarre feeling to arrive in one of the most remote communities in the world and find I'd stepped back in time by a century.
Telephone, TV, and most other means of communications simply stopped. But people in the Arctic are adaptable. They don't last long if they aren't. Emergency communications were hopped from airport-to-pilot-to-ground from the hamlet (It's a LONG way from any other habitation). We hunkered down, and yes, politely waited for news.
As the wikipedia link indicates, we waited for days while the local telco flew technicians across the territory to reposition their dishes and get services running.
It was the experience of living in a remote location - close to the technological edge, as it were - that led me to drop what I was doing a few years later and leave for the South Pacific, where I live today. (Also: When I left Iqaluit, I promised myself I'd never be cold again.) I live in a country with only satellite service, and have worked for the last 8 years helping to improve communications here.
(Not so) amusingly, about a year and a half after I arrived, the satellite providing service to our region suffered catastrophic failure [imagicity.com]. I was able to use my experience in the Arctic to help convince people here of the dangers of relying on a single source of data communications. We should be getting a submarine cable in 2012-13, and once that happens, I just might be able to rely on Internet again.