Satellite Radio - All three satellites broadcast directly to the consumer's receiver, but due to the highly elliptical orbit only two of them broadcast at any given time. A third, separate signal is uplinked to the AMC-6 Ku-band satellite and received by 36-inch satellite dishes for the ground repeater network. This third signal is broadcast on a third segment of the signal. There is an intentional four-second delay between each segment of the signal. This enables the receiver to maintain a large buffer of the audio stream, which, along with forward error correction helps keep the audio playing in the event that the signal is temporarily lost, such as when driving under an overpass or otherwise losing line-of-sight of any of the satellites or ground repeater stations.