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Some customers of Sky’s UK pay TV services appear to still be suffering from connectivity problems this morning after the platform suffered a significant service outage late last night, which primarily seemed to impact users of their Sky Q boxes. But Sky has remained frustratingly silent during this outage.
The bulk of the problems appear to have started at around 9:30pm last night and continued until just after midnight. Customers reported that their TV service suddenly switched off, despite the box itself still showing a green light. Some subscribers attempted to rectify the issue by rebooting their set-top-boxes, which worked for a short time (not for everybody) before the issue reoccurred.
During this period customers reported seeing various error messages, some of which referenced problems with an “authentication server“, while others displayed messages about there being no signal/source for the channels or stating that “there has been a problem finding your Sky Q box on the network“.
However, anybody looking for some kind of statement or acknowledgement of the issue from Sky’s online Help Team via social media (or otherwise), during one of its biggest national TV outages, will have been left disappointed. Sky didn’t post any public service statements during the night, and we’re still awaiting a comment from them this morning.
Nevertheless, Sky’s many suffering TV customers were still able to share their complaints via a huge mega thread on Sky’s Community Forum, which unfortunately reveals that quite a few people are still suffering problems this morning.
Sample Sky TV Complaint by Steve486 @ 8:18AM
“Our main Sky Q box keeps shutting down and then won’t switch back on. If I unplug it and restart it, it works for a while and then shuts itself down again. Of course this means none of our Sky Mini boxes in other rooms can connect either.”
Sample Sky TV Complaint by apchelt @ 8:12 AM
“Having exactly the same issue here too. Happened whilst watching a recording and whilst in (Paramount) app.
Reboot via mains switch fixed it temporarily then went again 30 minutes later.
Symptoms are black screen with green power light but unresponsive box.”
Sample Sky TV Complaint by Adams93 @ 8:13 AM
“Anyone else having problems with their SkyQ box not working? Has anyone been able to talk to anyone at sky and understand how to fix?”
A quick glance at the related Downdetector page for Sky confirms that there are still some issues for Sky to work out this morning. The suspicion is that Sky may have attempted to push out a platform configuration or firmware change to their boxes last night, which might have gone a bit wrong, although there’s not currently enough solid information to be confident of this. The issues come only shortly after Sky Glass and Sky Stream customers suffered their own set of similar issues (here).
UPDATE 8:41am
Sky’s support agents seemed to have woken up and are now responding to some social media posts with the following message: “We are aware of some technical issues overnight that led to Sky Q boxes to go into standby mode. Our technical support teams investigated and resolved this. If your sky Q box is still stuck in standby please switch off your Sky Q box at the power socket for 30 seconds and back on again which will restore service. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.”
However, as per the complaints above, switching the Sky Q box off and on again doesn’t appear to be working for everybody. Some other customers have advised turning both the Standby Mode and Smart Standby Mode off in the settings (Settings > Setup > Preferences), which only needs to be done on the main Sky Q box. But if you can’t get into the menu then disconnect the box from mains power for a minute and reconnect to try again.