Solar flare problems?

[azcellphonejunkie]

In reading news online, I found that we may be having problems with our phones due to the solar flares that are occurring on the sun right now. Has anyone else had any problems that may be releated to this (or possibly related?)

The reason I ask is that I have been having very poor coverage at work in the last week, and up until then, I seemed to be just fine. I wonder if this has anything to do with the sun, or the fact that my area around work is being built up very fast and I may have more users, or more obstructions. Anyway, if anyone has had any issues, please let me know.

[budney]

If you have been having problems with your RF all week, I doubt that it is being caused by the solor flares. To me it sounds like the tower may be having problems, as the flares would of been giving you problems on Monday (I believe) and today. I had a little trouble today with calls cutting in & out on my s56, also my soon to be employer (will be selling Cingular & T-Mobile [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]) was having some problems too.

[TProphet]

Here in the Seattle area, we got a rare treat last night: a spectacular display of Aurora Borealis resulting from the solar flare. I called a friend in California in the middle of it all to describe the scene. My Verizon CDMA phone worked perfectly, and I've experienced nothing unusual with any of my phones (Cingular, Sprint, and Verizon) over the past two days.

A couple of weird things over the past two days though. I administer a number of servers at work, and lost one of them today due to memory errors (solar flares can occasionally cause the contents of a computer's memory to become scrambled, resulting in a bluescreen or kernel panic). Additionally, the building's fire control system went bananas yesterday evening around 7:00PM and closed the fire doors on all the elevators, as well as shutting down all of the building's outside lighting, and the air conditioning system (excluding the labs, which are on separate HVAC).

[azcellphonejunkie]

Very interesting to hear people's experiences with what may be problems caused by the flares. I hope that this is the cause of my problems and that it will be a moot issue soon. Otherwise I may have to call Sprint and talk to them about the problems I have been having here! I seem to be doing OK this morning, but I guess we will have to just wait for the day to really begin and then i can tell if there will be any more problems. Anyone else experiencing issues?

[michiganeric]

So far, no problems for me, although I've been watching these flares at spaceweather.com and it's really out of the ordinary activity. The X17 flare that occurred on the 28th was one of those flares that occurs about four times every eleven years, and there was another huge one on the 29th. Any problems you're having due to solar activity should be gone or mostly gone after the 31st. Something this big happened a few years ago and took out a satellite that some paging system depended on. This kind of activity causes all sorts of grief to satellites -- surface charging, reduced solar panel output, and increased atmospheric drag are just three anomalies that can happen.

I just thought of something, though... if solar activity took out enough GPS satellites to cause location problems here on earth, then Verizon and Sprint will start having problems that probably won't subside until GPS starts working again. CDMA systems absolutely require a GPS receiver at the base station for extremely accurate timing. Lose the GPS, and you've effectively lost the base station (unless they've also got an AMPS antenna).

[azcellphonejunkie]

Nice thought! I didn't even think about the fact that if we don't have GPS satellite communication, we have no service!

[warriorfootball9]

I have a T-Mobile phone and i was on the phone when one of those Aurors came into our sky, i had a little bit of static but other than that everything was fine.