Sky TV resuming after 14-hour blackout

Sky TV's service partially returned this morning after a 14-hour break in transmission.

About 550,000 Sky digital television subscribers were left in the lurch after a fault with its ageing Optus B1 satellite last night.

Spokesman Tony O'Brien said there was a "temporary loss" of signal to the satellite after a routine positioning procedure by Optus, the satellite service provider.

Transmission was lost just before 7pm, and resumed just before 9am this morning. However, some pictures remained scrambled.


The company had earlier said it could not say if the service would resume in hours or days.

Sky has unencrypted its Sky Sports 1 channel tonight so all viewers can watch the Blues Super 14 clash with the Bulls, Newstalk ZB reported. (See link below)

Viewers in Wellington and Christchurch had a limited service during the outage, while broadcasts to Sky's Australian customers were also affected.

Sky said today the solar eclipse seen in parts of the world yesterday blocked sunlight to the solar cells on the satellite requiring the cells to be recharged after the eclipse and before the process of realigning the signal with earth could continue.

Sky's chief executive officer John Fellet said Sky and Optus staff worked through the night to re-power the satellite and restore a signal to Sky. "It's a delicate process and it's still continuing,'' he said early this morning.

Mr O'Brien said the satellite was communicating with Optus' ground station.

He said last night that refunds had not been considered yet but would be discussed after the problem was fixed. However, this morning the company said viewers would receive a credit on their bills.

Sky's UHF subscribers were unaffected.

The company's general number was engaged for much of the night, as customers rang asking for more information.

Its website, skytv.co.nz, went offline before being replaced with a simple message telling of the outage on the satellite.

The three-tonne satellite was launched in 1992 and has a lifetime of between 10 and 15 years.

It lost its primary processor last year, forcing a switch to its back-up. The concern at the time was if, in the interim, the back-up failed too.

Mr O'Brien said last night's outage had nothing to do with this.

A new satellite, the Optus D1, is due to be launched in June.

The Herald received numerous calls from irate customers who could not get through to Sky's customer services centre.

Blank screens saw an exodus of patrons in one pub.

"It's a biggie ... Our pub is nearly empty because of it," said Schenelle Phear, manager of the Lovelocks Sports Bar in Wellington.

"People can't really sit in the pub not doing anything but drinking."

- ERROL KIONG, HERALD ONLINE STAFF, NZPA