CenturyLink reported that as of Friday evening, all consumer services impacted by an internet outage that began on Thursday – including voice and 911 services – have been restored.
CenturyLink reported that a “major path issue” is what caused outages across Montana and several other states.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency has launched an investigation into the nationwide CenturyLink outage, which affected 911 service for numerous consumers across the country.
Chairman Pai issued the following statement regarding the situation:
“When an emergency strikes, it’s critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help. The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling. I’ve directed the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to immediately launch an investigation into the cause and impact of this outage. This inquiry will include an examination of the effect that CenturyLink’s outage appears to have had on other providers’ 911 services. I have also spoken with CenturyLink to underscore the urgency of restoring service immediately. We will continue to monitor this situation closely to ensure that consumers’ access to 911 is restored as quickly as possible.”
The network event experienced by CenturyLink Thursday has been resolved. Services for business and residential customers affected by the event have been restored.
— CenturyLink (@CenturyLink) December 29, 2018
-Reported by Mark Thorsell/MTN News
(December 28, 2018) CenturyLink reports that a “major path issue” is what has caused outages across Montana and several other states on Thursday.
The company posted on their Twitter page early Friday that they expect to restore service sometime Friday morning.
The outages impacted banks, stores, local city government offices, some police stations in Montana and satellite TV operators DirecTV and Dish Network.
CenturyLink said that they were seeing “positive progress” in resolving the problem as of 2:45 a.m. on Friday.
CenturyLink said their engineers and technicians identified a network element that was impacting customer service and apologized for the inconvenience to its customers.
Specifics on what actually happened was not released.
The company further stated that as of 8:45 a.m. they were “seeing good progress” but that “restoration work is not complete.”
Some Verizon customers have also been suffering from internet outages because they use CenturyLink to distribute their data.
-Reported by Mark Thorsell/MTN News
