3rd X class flare of the last 24 hours. A 6.3 The 1.7 is likely the one that caused the cell issues,the 1.8 maintained the problem.

[smokingman]

We will soon find out how the 6.3 impacts earth orbit communication satellites.

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

spaceweather.com

Not updated with the 3rd yet.

Space Weather by SolarHam

www.solarham.net

HF Propagation and Solar-Terrestrial Data Website

Free solar-terrestrial data displayed on your web page or site, updated every 3-hours. Also contains solar and radio propagation information applicable to ham radio including solar conditions, space conditions, online propagation tool, online SN to SFI/SFI to SN conversion tool, online...

www.hamqsl.com

Up date for the 3rd and modeled impacts from NOAA and NASA reviewed around 6am EST


Likely no sever storm as it does not appear any of the last CME is earth directed, but we will see in the AM. Minor impact from a filament that ejected expected though. The sun spot is a monster and will likely release more flares.

Homepage | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center

www.swpc.noaa.gov

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I'm confused. Is the "cell issues" in your thread title reference the AT&T outage? Your first linked article reads:

CELL PHONE OUTAGE: While solar flares can affect communication systems, it is highly unlikely that these two X-flares contributed to today's widely reported cell phone outages. The flares, while intense, did not cause a solar radiation storm. Moreover, the shortwave radio blackouts they did cause were too brief and too low in frequency to interfere with most cell phone communications. Other explanations are more likely.

 

[jsharmon7]

I don’t know why it would have only affected ATT.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I don’t know why it would have only affected ATT.

Me either. I would think it would be geographic area dependent, not carrier dependent. Cell issue in the thread title could be something other than the AT&T cell phone outage, though, which is why I asked the clarifying question.

And I did read your signature.

 

[smokingman]

I'm confused. Is the "cell issues" in your thread title reference the AT&T outage? Your first linked article reads:

5G systems run from 450hz(N51) to 6.7ghz(N104).

Incoherent solar radio emissions are in the 1-3ghz range. They are always active in the background,but can spike greatly in strength during flares or filament releases. The larger the flare the more the spike. Unlike a cme they impact the earth at near the speed of light, the same as the X ray impact that effect LOW frequencies.

It is fair to say the x-ray impact did nothing to cell service. It is unreasonable and defies logic to say the incoherent radio emissions did nothing. Some where at AT&T and other carriers they likely have someone who already figured it out. Throw a giant signal spike into any system and it will disrupt normal signals, and that is what just happened once in the very early am and again a few hours later. After it passed they likely had to reset loads of systems. It took a few hours,but no real damage done to anything. The cell system regained stability. Seems likely to me.

Then again I can not see that data live, few can. I have looked for it the better part of the evening and can only find past years historical data on NOAA, NASA, or ESA sites.

Somewhere, someone is already doing a study though I am sure and in a few months to a year they will likely conclude it caused the outage.

Xrays though had zero to do with cell service being out. That I will agree with.

It was most carriers. AT&T took the longest to recover.

https://downdetector.com/

Just my hypothesis, I can not prove it without the data for it to become a theory.

​

 

[BehindBlueI's]

It is fair to say the x-ray impact did nothing to cell service. It is unreasonable and defies logic to say the incoherent radio emissions did nothing. Some where at AT&T and other carriers they likely have someone who already figured it out. Throw a giant signal spike into any system and it will disrupt normal signals, and that is what just happened once in the very early am and again a few hours later. After it passed they likely had to reset loads of systems. It took a few hours,but no real damage done to anything. The cell system regained stability. Seems likely to me.

Understand I know slightly less than nothing on this topic, so feel free to break it down like Barney for me. I am interested in understanding, I just don't have the background to know what's what.

The media reports (I know...) say the other carriers say the down reports were mostly due to customers using ATT network or trying to reach ATT customers. *If* that's true, is there anything unique to AT&T that makes them more susceptible to this sort of interference? They are a big player in public safety communications and connected vehicles, so I would hope they are more robust.

 

[smokingman]

Understand I know slightly less than nothing on this topic, so feel free to break it down like Barney for me. I am interested in understanding, I just don't have the background to know what's what.

The media reports (I know...) say the other carriers say the down reports were mostly due to customers using ATT network or trying to reach ATT customers. *If* that's true, is there anything unique to AT&T that makes them more susceptible to this sort of interference? They are a big player in public safety communications and connected vehicles, so I would hope they are more robust.

primer.

Incoherent Solar Radio Emission

Incoherent solar radio radiation comes from the free-free, gyroresonance, and gyrosynchrotron emission mechanisms. Free-free is primarily produced from Coulomb collisions between thermal electrons and ions. Gyroresonance and gyrosynchrotron result from the acceleration of low-energy electrons...

www.frontiersin.org

It could be company software or the fact they rely mainly on one tower company for 5G towers/hardware. No idea on that end.

AT&T, Crown Castle sign long-term deal for 5G deployment

AT&T and Houston-based wireless infrastructure provider, Crown Castle, have signed a...

www.chron.com

I am looking at the timing as well. You can see the system take the first hit, and start to recover. Then what happens? The longer duration 1.8x and outages start moving up(though more managed I expect, as they knew something was wrong and took steps). What they did was not enough though. Then as the signal clears,you see the decline in outages. Then the rapid decline at the end as they reset things. Most cell companies decline was just gradual. AT&T though at the end was a rapid one, as in system resets.


The same spike as Tmobile.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

primer.

Incoherent Solar Radio Emission

Incoherent solar radio radiation comes from the free-free, gyroresonance, and gyrosynchrotron emission mechanisms. Free-free is primarily produced from Coulomb collisions between thermal electrons and ions. Gyroresonance and gyrosynchrotron result from the acceleration of low-energy electrons...

www.frontiersin.org

It could be company software or the fact they rely mainly on one tower company for 5G towers/hardware. No idea on that end.

AT&T, Crown Castle sign long-term deal for 5G deployment

AT&T and Houston-based wireless infrastructure provider, Crown Castle, have signed a...

www.chron.com

I don't have the base level knowledge to understand the primer you posted. This may be like when a friend of mine tried to explain her role in cancer research and I ended up with she kills mice to cure cancer and nothing else. I appreciate the attempt, though.

 

[Cameramonkey]

One of the tinfoil theories is the outage is timed to coincide with these solar bursts. (assuming its hackers)
When cell goes down, what do you do? Fail over to your backup, which is radio... which the solar flares disrupt.

So when do you attack a target? When you know your target is going to be vulnerable. Like during a shift change, when one path is down for maintenance, etc.

And thanks to space weather reports, we have advance notice of things like this.

So @BehindBlueI's imagine this. Jewelry store is getting an alarm system upgrade. Its scheduled for next Friday. That takes the entire system down. HARD. Not even panic buttons work. Security vendor tech mentions the job over a beer at the bar with a buddy, complaining about how much of a PITA it is due to the annoying owner. It is overheard by another patron, who is in a gang. When do you think the gang is going to decide to rob the jewelry store?

 

[smokingman]

I don't have the base level knowledge to understand the primer you posted. This may be like when a friend of mine tried to explain her role in cancer research and I ended up with she kills mice to cure cancer and nothing else. I appreciate the attempt, though.

In short cell towers are in the GHZ range. Xrays impact the low HZ range(HAM). Incoherent solar radio emission's the high GHZ range(cell towers). I have seen no one mention the later,but all quickly claim the xray data does not support any plausible theory of cell tower impact.
As far as I know and have read no one has ever mentioned ISRE impact or how bad it was. It is just a theory that I have that happens to match what we saw happen. I could be totally wrong and it could have been a 15 year old in China, but nothing is pointing to that.

 

[Cameramonkey]

Speaking of attacks. My comcast just went down. TO THE BUNKER!!!

 

[BehindBlueI's]

In short cell towers are in the GHZ range. Xrays impact the low HZ range(HAM). Incoherent solar radio emission's the high GHZ range(cell towers). I have seen no one mention the later,but all quickly claim the xray data does not support any plausible theory of cell tower impact.
As far as I know and have read no one has ever mentioned ISRE impact or how bad it was. It is just a theory that I have that happens to match what we saw happen. I could be totally wrong and it could have been a 15 year old in China, but nothing is pointing to that.

Ok, so I think we're getting to the level I understand, but allow me to rephrase and you tell me if I got it.

I understand radio waves operate on the spectrum of electromagnetism and I understand that 5G occupies a certain range of frequencies on that spectrum. So far no official data indicates that the solar flare would account for interference in the correct band. Nothing is special about AT&T's place on the band (right?) but if they were impacted more than others it could be an issue with hardware (better shielding?) or software (better what, some sort of noise reduction software analogy?) It's also possible it was coincidental timing and a normal internal screw up or an external bad actor caused the issue?

 

[bigretic]

The problem with everyone sighting downdetctor is that the sight is just simple user reporting - zero technical verification other that Karen saying her phone or netfilx doesn't work. A lot of the time the problem is on site, but the user can't see past their own nose. Such is the case where anyone from any network says there is an outage because they can't complete a call without realizing what the actual cause is.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

The problem with everyone sighting downdetctor is that the sight is just simple user reporting - zero technical verification other that Karen saying her phone or netfilx doesn't work. A lot of the time the problem is on site, but the user can't see past their own nose. Such is the case where anyone from any network says there is an outage because they can't complete a call without realizing what the actual cause is.

Don't know about downdetector, but some of the sites do actually go out and ping the reported website to verify whether it is up or not. Not sure how that would work with cell networks though.

 

[smokingman]

Short video. Goes over impacted sites and systems, it was much more than just AT&T. Gmail,starlink, ect...
I read the official AT&T about a coding error. I believe an error in their filter/safety systems would explain why they were more impacted than other providers. That however does not explain the other outages such as Starlink or any of the impacted banks,game servers, ect.

 

[1nderbeard]

I am honestly surprised people didn't start looking after a few minutes of being without social media on their phones.

 

[smokingman]

Speaking of attacks. My comcast just went down. TO THE BUNKER!!!

There are boatloats of comcast meme's

 

[KokomoDave]

My HAM radio was doing crazy stuff when the systems went down. I was listening to a guy locally then he phased out, a new person with a funny accent cut in and then nothing...

 

[Ark]

I don’t know why it would have only affected ATT.

AT&T sucks so bad that even the freaking sun is angry at them.

 

[Tactically Fat]

AT&T blames coding error for hourslong network outage

AT&T blamed the incident on an error in coding, without elaborating.

www.wthr.com

Not solar-flare related.

Stop believing junk science. Don't be gullible.