XM Satellite Radio confirms that it was an attempted software upgrade which shut down one of its satellites, leaving many subscribers without service for most of Monday and well into Tuesday. By yesterday afternoon, XM said the problem had been fixed and service restored. Here is the company statement:
"XM Satellite Radio has resumed normal levels of service for customers who experienced outages or significantly degraded service starting yesterday. The problem occurred during the loading of software to a critical component of the satellite broadcast system, which resulted in a temporary loss of signal from one of the company's satellites. After you turn on your XM radio, please allow five to ten minutes to reacquire the XM signal. XM apologizes for any inconvenience this has caused."
RBR observation: If it weren't for the pending merger, Sirius could jump on this for the poor way XM handled customer service and communications. It seemed that the company was just trying to ignore the fact that most of its subscribers were not receiving its service. It was many hours before XM even acknowledged on its web site that there was a problem. Meanwhile, it was being roasted on various Internet blogs by its previously loyal customers.
