Why there’ll be regular disruption of your TV signal in next 7 days

Starting Friday, March 18, you will notice random disruption of the transmission of television signals in the East African region.

The disruptions on your favourite TV channels will neither be your problem nor the broadcaster’s and is likely to last for a week.

The interruptions are expected to run between two and eight minutes and at random intervals.

Broadcast technical experts say the interruptions are caused by “satellite sun outage”.

In broadcast, transmission is done via satellites.

It begins with a signal coming from a source (TV or radio) to a large antenna referred to as a "gateway station".

The antenna transmits that signal to a satellite, which relays the signal over an area, allowing you to watch television or listen to the radio.

Satellites used by media firms are geostationary, meaning they remain fixed over one point on earth but communicate in a microwave frequency. The sun transmits the same frequency.

“The sun, being a powerful source of broadband microwave noise, passes behind the satellite (when viewed from earth), which causes interference and the degree of interference varies from slight signal degradation to complete loss of signal. This phenomenon is a natural occurrence that is unavoidable but short-lived,” technical experts at The Standard Group say.

So, when the sun moves along the equator during an equinox, it passes behind these stationary satellites.

This is what affects the operation of the satellites.

The phenomenon happens every March and September during the equinox season, which occurs twice each year, around March 20 and September 23.

An equinox occurs when the centre of the visible sun is directly above the equator.

This month (March, 2022), the first “satellite sun outage” is expected to occur on Friday, March 18 for seven days.

On the first day (Friday, March 18), the disruption is expected to last for about four minutes.

It will run for seven minutes on Saturday to Monday, then peak at eight minutes on Tuesday.

The disruption time will start reducing on Wednesday, when it will last for seven minutes, then four-minutes and forty-four seconds on Thursday, March 24, the final day.

The brief outages will not be limited to television and radio stations. Users, whose internet is provided through satellite, may also experience downtimes.