A regional outage of Spectrum internet service continues to plague customers across parts of Montana.
The outage began at about 7 p.m. on Thursday, and as of 6:30 p.m. on Friday, the service is still out for Great Falls Falls and other areas, including Havre, Malta, and Chinook.
Spectrum has not provided an estimated time for when service might be restored.
Spectrum spokesman Bret Picciolo provided the following information to KRTV:
“Damage to a third-party carrier’s fiber-optic network is disrupting services for Spectrum customers in the area. That carrier has been engaged and is working to repair the damage and restore service as quickly as possible.
The damage occurred last night but crews were unable to access the site until this morning for safety reasons. Access to the site is controlled by the power company and crews were unable to access the damage until the power company deemed the area safe to enter.
The damage occurred on aerial line over a ravine. Due to geographic challenges in the area the damage occurred, technicians are currently working to put a temporary solution in place in order to restore service as quickly as possible.
Regarding credits: We will work individually with customers who were impacted.”
NorthWestern Energy spokesman Butch Larcombe sent the following message to KRTV:
The outage is result of damaged communications line and NorthWestern Energy has been working with the communications company to facilitate repairs since last night.
Reactions on the KRTV Facebook page have ranged from anger to humor to calls for patience:
Anthony Thomas: maybe they should have some sort of plan in place for if or when this happens again, seems silly that 1 cable affects that many people.
Stella Johnson: This is becoming ridiculous! I have things to take care of and it requires internet access!!! 16 going on 17 hours!!! Come on!!!
Keegan Kruger: Charter is out because the main line running through helena on to New York got hit/cut. Hard to say how long it’ll take to splice in a new chunk. Remember. Something this big is a fiberline the size of a car.
April Roby: I understand it’s difficult and I also understand this is not their fault but what makes me upset is the way they handle these situations..they never credit your account despite promising they will
Mike Iverson: Omg what are we gonna do were gonna die without our technology, how did they do it back in the olden days.
John Quimby: Be patient people. Those of us who work for ISPs/MSPs deal with this stuff regularly. It isn’t fun for the crews and it isn’t fun for the people taking the hundreds, sometimes thousands of phone calls regarding service being down. Remember, crews do this work year round, no matter if it’s 100 degrees or – 30 degrees.
We will update you if we get more information.
There is no word yet on the cause of the outage, nor how long it will take to restore service.
Posted by KRTV Great Falls on Thursday, October 4, 2018
