XM Outage

Around Noon yesterday, I was headed out to work when something happened to my XM signal. Suddenly, in places where I should receive a perfect signal, I had very spotty reception. Every overpass I went under faded the signal down to nothing. Thinking it was the receiver, I pulled the plug in disgust and tuned into WJAS.

After my 8 hour work day (into the night) I got back in the car and plugged in the ole receiver only to have the same misfortune of spotty coverage. The same thing was happening with my home receiver…which didn’t pick up a thing.

As it turns out, many people experienced the same problem. According to DCRTV, the problem was due to XM-3 the Satellite itself which lost its downlinking abilities. The reason for this is unkown. According to XM’s statement, the outage is temporary and will affect some customers. A fix was expected by early evening, but as of this writing (the following early morning) the fix doesn’t seem to have taken place.