Satellite Problem Cuts Service to 90% of Pagers

As many as 90% of the more than 44 million pager customers nationwide lost service Tuesday when a communications satellite spun out of control, causing the largest and longest outage of its kind.

The blackout, which hit at 3:18 p.m., affected everyone from doctors and emergency crews to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to child-care providers. It was not immediately clear when service would be restored.

For many, the incident reveals the nation’s dependence on high-tech communications and its vulnerabilities. Only the older paging networks--those still using ground-based transmission--were able to maintain service.

Although paging companies have considered backup systems, the costs were seen as prohibitive, given the low probability of such a massive outage.

PageNet, the country’s largest paging company with more than 10 million U.S. customers, said that nearly its entire network was inoperable late into the evening.

Millions more customers, served by PageMart, SkyTel, MobilComm and Airtouch, as well as phone companies such as MCI and Sprint PCS, also lost service.

“Eighty to 90% of everyone out there that has a pager is not getting service right now,” said Scott Baradell, a spokesman for Dallas-based PageNet. “This affects virtually every paging company; they all use the same satellite.”

The affected satellite, called the Galaxy IV, was built by Hughes Space and Communications in El Segundo and launched five years ago. PanAmSat, which operates the Galaxy IV, was working into the morning to regain control of the satellite and restore service.

PageNet told its customers that it was looking into backup plans, including redirecting messages to another satellite. But that process could only be done on a city-by-city basis and could take as little as 24 hours for major markets, such as Los Angeles, and nearly a week for some rural areas.

“This has never happened before, ever,” Baradell said. “This is kind of like a lightning strike.”

The effects of the service outage were felt throughout the country.

“People have come to rely on pagers to do business and for their personal life,” said Bridget Cavanaugh, senior manager for corporate marketing at PageMart. “These are events that we develop contingency plans for. We are working with our satellite providers.”

The pager problem was of particular concern to doctors. Dr. Steve Dickens, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said he was spending the night at the hospital because of the problem.

“I have to tell [the hospital] what to do and how to respond,” he said. “Protocol says they can’t make a decision without first calling the doctor.”

Television stations use Galaxy IV to transmit feeds of advance shows, said Marguerite Sullivan, satellite coordinator for KCAL-TV Channel 9 in Los Angeles. It was not clear what television programming might be affected.

CBS radio and television, the Chinese Television Network and the CNN Airport Network send feeds through Galaxy IV. CBS relies most heavily on Galaxy IV but had a backup plan and has not been affected by the outage, said spokeswoman Amy Malone. ABC and NBC also said their operations have not been affected.

Other communications companies that offer paging services were scrambling to assess the impact of the outage. AT&T; Corp. spokesman Ken Woo said that fewer than half a million of AT&T;’s 1.2 million customers experienced disruptions. Other carriers, including Bell Atlantic, said they weren’t affected because they use land transmission for paging.

PageMart said it is beginning to switch to other satellites and was hoping to restore service to some cities by early this morning.

According to PanAmSat officials, the Galaxy IV satellite began to rotate, losing the position necessary for communication transmissions. The automatic backup unit also failed, the company said.

“We are examining long-term options in the event that we cannot reactivate the satellite, including the use of available capacity on other PanAmSat spacecraft with domestic U.S. coverage,” Robert Bednarek, senior vice president and chief technology officer for PanAmSat, said in a statement.

“PanAmSat is deploying all possible resources within our company and the satellite communications industry to ensure continuous, high-quality transmissions for their video and telecommunications services.”

In the meantime, people with pagers that include voice mail can still call in and get their messages.

The last major outage occurred in September 1995 when a computer operator at Tulsa-based Space Com inadvertently sent out a command that turned off thousands of satellite receivers. That error resulted in a service blackout that lasted less than a day and affected millions of personal pagers.

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this story. Associated Press and Bloomberg News also contributed to this story.