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Satellite Glitch Leaves Northern Canada In the (Internet) Dark
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."
So they will politely and patiently wait out the problem.
This is the perfect chance to find out the real cost of a first world nation not having internet access. We need these numbers to make better laws about internet access restriction and even to decide whether it should be a right.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Yes, just tie it to the back of white fang, say mush, and watch the spool unreel.
Nullius in verba
Even the editors* noticed that and added the parenthetical clarification.
"In the dark" does not mean "in the literal darkness, without the power to generate light or heat." I.e., not a power generation or distribution problem, which is the expected context of the stock phrase "in the dark".
They mean "In the INTARWEBS dark." As in, no Facebook, no Twitter, no YouTube.
You know, an actual crisis.
*Seriously. How bad do you have to be, that the world-famous Slashdot Editor Corps feels compelled to actually edit you? That's... INCONCEIVABLE.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Residents on the Sun say their reception has gone up 100%
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
It's as if a hundred voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Ok, sorry that was in bad taste. I love my frosty neighbors to the North (I've spent a lot of time in Canada and really do love the place and the people). I hope they get interwebz back soon.
The Digital Sorceress
Let's say everything about Canada we were too polite to say earlier!
From what I understand, northern Canada is somewhat remote. In fact, I understand there to be limited road access above the 75th parallel in much of the country. I would posit that it would be unfeasibly expensive to lay and maintain fiber cable out through difficult a media (permafrost) to support communities that number in the dozens.
Satellites seem to me to offer the best way to connect small settlements spread out across millions of square miles of the Canadian back country.
Do you have any idea how sparse the population is up there, and just how much land you'd have to cover? It's like laying 500km of fiber for every person.
Not to mention that you'd have to deal with seasonal melting and freezing of muskeg and swamps and lakes.
Not going to happen any time soon.
Simple: economics. It costs money to support and maintain. In a country as large as Canada there's a lot of infrastructure (rail, roads, air traffic, mail, and in some cases telephone) that is paid or subsized by the federal (or provincial) government. For instance, there's a a beautifully maintained ~200km highway stretch between Barrie and Sudbury (Ontario) with very little in between. You have very limited wireless coverage as well (not even talking cell phones here, just old-fashioned radio/CB), important for things like emergency services. Who is paying for that?
In some parts of the world it's not viable to have a small community on the larger "grid". I've been to many locations in Vancouver Island, northern Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta where your communications and even utility options are very limited.
I've also seen that in parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Quintana Roo that are isolated. I'm sure Russia has the same challenges.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Dont they have undersea fiber connections to the country, and DSL and stuff? Or even dialup? Why would half the country use only Satellite as thier Internet connection?
Only those communities that are remote enough to depend solely on satellite are affected. FTA: "Northwestel said all communities across Nunavut, N.W.T. and Yukon that receive their long distance calling and data service via satellite are affected."
Uhm, so that's what like 47 people?
The satellite went into safety mode and moved from pointing to the earth to pointing to the sun.
Why on earth is this what it does when it goes into safety mode? How is that supposed to help the problem/prevent it from becoming worse?
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
An opportunity to slander our norther neighbors without retribution. :)
Canadians can't play hockey! Canadian beer tastes like pee! Tree sap is not mothers milk!
hahahaha naner naner naner. :P
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
it'll point wherever it bloody wants to point.
Remember, Canada is a big place. 75% of all Canadians live within 90 miles of the US border. So keep this in mind while you read all of the comments saying what a calamity this is for Canadians. Northern Canada -- and I say this as a Canadian, though some may disagree (like we disagree about what it means to be in Eastern Canada or Western Canada) -- generally are those who live above 55-60 degrees N which is an exceptionally small percentage of the total population.
Should probably read....
Remote communities in Canada's far north without internet.
Any major populated area connected by land line will not be impacted... In fact I would argue that nothing larger than a "Town" is likely impacted impacted.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Anik F2 satellite experienced an attitude control issue
Great, so now we have self-aware machines with personality disorders orbiting us? Who's gonna capitalize on the budding satellite anger-management industry?
Won't work. Hikers in the Canadian wilderness have long carried a piece of fiber optic cable with them. If they get lost, they just bury the cable and hitch a ride back when the backhoe comes to dig it up.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
OB,
A loss of communications can mean only one thing. Invasion!
attitude: Aeronautics . the inclination of the three principal axes of an aircraft relative to the wind, to the ground, etc. ie where it is pointing
Who designed that comm system?
http://www.nwtel.ca/media/images/operating_map_full.jpg
experienced an attitude control issue
Well, maybe if someone went up there and gave it an attitude adjustment, then they'd get their Internet back! :P
The cake is a lie.
If you want reliable backup comms in the wilderness you use radio.
The reliance on phones and internet is convenient, but if you can afford those you can afford radio gear and spend some time learning how to use it.
Amateur radio operators were the original nerds long before computers existed.
http://www.rac.ca/
http://www.arrl.org/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Shaw Broadcast Services uses Anik F2 so cable customs tv may be missing out out on channels and maybe US NHL CENTER ICE customs will not be able to get games on Canada channels.
Go read this page about how "The humble old rooftop TV aerial could bring superfast Internet to even the most remote shack in the Australian Outback and help solve the problem of how to connect isolated communities across the globe."
Whoosh
This post comes with a double-your-money-back guarantee!
Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
http://www.shawbroadcast.ca/docs/signal_lists/hd_signal_list_transport_oct11_e.pdf
The NHL is big in Canada so like the feeds will have to move and other channels may get kicked off air.
I know that iN DEMAND uses shaw broadcast to get the feeds for the CBC, TSN, rogers sports net games.
Also note that Shaw Direct (Formerly Starchoice) uses Annik K2 for half of its channels.
People really hope they have a solution before the first game of the season, which is tonight. They will lose many subscribers due to this, no doubt about it.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
It's closer to "a boat" than "a boot" if the articles about Canadian raising on Wikipedia and TV Tropes are to be believed.
Just bring fiber to the North, damn it.
No need for fiber. I believe copper is a superconductor at those temperatures.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Not all that far from the truth. About 90% of the population lives within 160km of the US border. The three territories make up 39% of the area of Canada, but only 0.3% of the population.
it takes time to point to a other satellite and then you have reconfigure all the radios to the TP's on a differnt satellite.
Canada has lot's of hills and Mountains that get it the way.
Because as soon as you get fiber to the North, you're done? Nunavut has a land area bigger than Alaska and 1/20th the population. The largest town is only 7,000 people. The rest are spread across dozens of tiny communities across the north.
Rocket science: "attitude"
Plain English: "which way it's pointing"
Rocket science: "Anik F2 satellite experienced an attitude control issue"
Plain English: "Anik F2 satellite started spinning out of control"
A packet radio network. Forget about streaming videos tho...
From Canadian tv channels.
right now no
Sportsnet Vancouver Canucks SD
Sportsnet Senators SD
CBC Charlottetown SD
CBC Regina SD
CBC Toronto HD
WGN HD (Canadian feed same as WGN 9 OTA)
All Rogers sports NET HD but Sports net east HD.
Rogers Sports net one HD
TSN 1 HD
TSN 2 HD
other as well.
If you want to see what living with satellite communications is like, KNet has some detailed statistics and news:
http://tech.knet.on.ca/
It looks like they use a different satellite, but the News section discusses the sorts of things that affect service and if you scroll down the list you'll find traffic data for communities served by satellite.
Outages are common, and can be caused by anything from the town's electrical generators going down to the nature of the satellite's orbit.
Much like the ones that have occurred in major blackouts. Can't watch porn on the internet then hell lets do the real thing!
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
They use penguins on hamster wheels. Tell your friends- they'll be impressed by how smart you are.
Wait - I should write that in French so we only lose the bad kind of Canadian.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
Satellite is pretty much the only option for rural areas. The Canadian north is REALLY, REALLY, big. Many of the camps up there are temporary and not worth running permanent infrastructure up there. Alot of the customers of satelite services are commercial applications. Oil companies, Loggers, other natual resources. The people that live up there are mostly in small towns or cities, but that still leaves millions of square kms that are very remote. Would you really invest in running a fiber to a camp that only services 100 people for 3 years then dissapears? Setup a wireless tower that will not be needed in a few years? Satellite is the way to go. It sure does suck, and it's definately unreliable, but it's really the only option. As I write this, 7 of my sites are affected by this outage. Believe me, if we could get them on another type of serivce, we would, but for now, this is what we get.
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It's not a typo
(see def. #3)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Because it doesn't make a lot of sense to run a fibre 1,000 miles through rough terrain with no road access, and where you can't bury it thanks to the permafrost layer, to serve a community of 200, which would be considered a large community in some parts of northern Canada?
I don't think anybody in the states outside of people working in the mining industry and people living in Alaska have any clue how remote Canada's high arctic actually is, nor how desolate things get once you're above the tree line.
you also have to have people on the ground capable of doing this. I supply internet access to 17 remote communities through F2, and there's no way in hell anyone on the ground in these communities would be able to successfully repoint the satellite dish. We just have to wait for Telesat to get things back up and running. The current estimate is 1700 Pacific time.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Northern Canada is not really a first-world region. It's mostly empty, frozen land and remote communities of native people living pretty basic lifestyles. Not much in common with the cities in the South.
Given that Canada is an ally of the United States- no, they are a first-world country. Have been since the Cold War, which is where the term came from.
See, bet you thought "third world" meant something like "really poor", and didn't know that "first world" equals "with us", second world equals "with the commies", and "third world" equals "not allied with either."
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Third_World
Please help metamoderate.
Almost half of WB's Ka beams are on Anik-F2. They should also be out unless "out of control" has a some very subtle nuances. Maybe CBC doesn't report on anything south of the border.
People do understand the basic concept. You, however, do not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We can fix that little problem.
Have gnu, will travel.
This thing almost messed up the first NHL game of the season broadcast. And we got TV problem for more than a Day! I demand a Royal Commission to determine what caused this infamy! lolll