OT I wish we had cable...

[sKilled]

Wanted to watch American hot rod and got no signal - checked the sky website and it states:

"Due to an outage of SKY’s Optus B1 there are no satellite services at this time.

We regret any inconvenience this may be causing you. We are working with Optus, the service provider, to restore service as soon as possible.

We expect that the phone lines will be extremely busy during this time so to be able to keep you informed we will be placing updates and information on this website.

10:45pm, 30 March 2006"

Surfed the web and found out that the Optus B1 sattelite lost its primary Sattelite Control Processor last year, and has been running on a backup since! Whats the bet we won't be getting Sky TV untill Optus gets a new bird up in space later this year?

I wish I had cable...

[pundit]

Blame Singtel (http://www.optusbusiness.com.au/singtel/) (Singapore). They bought Optus from Cable & Wireless about six years ago.

As it happens Australias Defence mobile satellite telephone network was formerly owned by Optus.
So it's comforting to know the Singaporian government has been eavesdropping (http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/stories/s344102.htm) on our military communcations since then. :(

Q. So what government would be stupid allow the sale of it's own Military Communications system to a foreign country while they continue to use it for their own defence purposes?

A. OURS!!!

[sKilled]

It gets better! Just did some surfing (although I should finish my Psychology assignment for tommorrow). Turns out that the B1 sattelites' main processor failed last year and it is now running on a redundancy. It's scheduled for replacement later this year. And because it's still down, me thinks Optus is lying - good chance the bird is now spacejunk.

[DanDombrowski]

Its probably a large alien ship destroying satellites, like in Independance Day.

[sKilled]

LOL - I wish as I could then forgive them seeing as I pay 60 bucks a month for a blue screen atm