Turns Out The Rogue Satellite is Really Boring « Time Warner Cable Untangled

May 20 2010

Turns Out The Rogue Satellite is Really Boring

I love it when real life starts to sound like a sci-fi movie — and apparently so does everyone else. Last week, the whole Internet was buzzing with news about a rogue satellite that threatened to knock out cable programming. I sure did manage to blog about it here.

My friend (and, to be clear, a consultant that works with me) Virginia had a pretty pithy tweet about it that summed up the jokes and hopes pretty well.

Turns out the real story is a fair bit more boring than all that. From CNN.com:

… Dianne VanBeber, a spokeswoman for Luxembourg-based Intelsat, said media reports over the past day or so have drastically overstated the potential impact on television viewers.

“The reality is it’s not quite as sexy as it sounds,” she said Wednesday. “If we did absolutely nothing, it would create confusion … [but] we’re working with the limited number of customers that are on that satellite and taking active steps to make sure any interference is limited or completely avoided.”

She said the chances of avoiding perceptible interference are “pretty good.” If there is interference, it would last for hours, not days, she said.

Yves Feltes, a spokesman for SES World Skies — which owns the other satellite — issued a statement saying his company is “doing our utmost in order to mitigate any interference into any of our traffic in close coordination with our customers and our competitor Intelstat.”

So the worst-case scenario is that cable programming may be out for a few hours, forcing us blinking into the sunshine. No fireballs, no space cowboys. Just a little static on the TV, maybe.