Yes it is - but if you go in to the mission control room (new one - not the old one - that's just for visitors now) you will see one of those maps that has the whole world as a rectangular display. On the display there is a large, slightly darker, circle in the Pacific Ocean which delineates where they lose communications. It takes about thirty minutes for the Space Station to move through the area and not all passes go through it (everything in orbit goes on these sine wave patterns). Anyway, I can't find any maps that show it. It's just one of those things you know about if you work with Mission Control I guess.

To go completely off topic here: Did you hear the one about the Russian astronaut who was putting up shelves in the space station and drilled into outer space? True story. He slammed a clipboard up against the bulk head to keep the air from escaping. Russia flew a MIG over to the US which landed in Florida at one of the smaller fields around NASA. Someone was waiting for them when they landed and a device was given to the man in the jeep who raced over to where the Space Shuttle was going to launch. The device was taken up to the astronauts and one of the astronauts held onto the device as they took off. The device was delivered, the hole sealed. The device? A standard caulk gun with a caulking cannister in it. Yes. You too can fix the international space station with caulk. Must have been decent stuff because I never heard of them doing any other repairs to the problem. :-)