S. Florida internet outages ongoing
Companies won’t say how many are without services
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Irma battered Florida, untold numbers of AT&T and Comcast customers remained without internet, TV and phone services.
In an email on Wednesday, Robert Burdick, of Coral Springs, described returning to his home the day after Irma to discover his AT&T connection was down.
“It remains down today,” he said. “So what’s that — nine days? Ten days? I call AT&T support and get connected offshore and they don’t listen, they just say things that aren’t true. I can’t get an answer. I can’t get a status update. It’s just crazy.” On Friday, Burdick confirmed his service remained down.
Spokeswomen for the two companies refuse to specify how many customers are still without services.
“Giving out numbers does not help customers get back in service,” said Kelly Starling, AT&T’s PR manager for South Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands. “We’re focused on restoring service and only on that.”
Comcast spokeswoman Mindy Kramer also declined to reveal how many customers remained without the company’s Xfinity services in the region.
She said 99 percent of customers in Broward and Palm Beach counties have been restored, as well as about 94 percent in MiamiDade County.
The two counties “are close to being back to regular business operations,” with most outages specific to individual customers, such as a damaged line between a distribution pole and home, she said.
Lingering damage to the company’s fiber optic cables from fallen power poles and power lines is contributing to the slower restoration in Miami-Dade, she said.
“There are many fiber cuts,” she said, “around the Redlands, North Dade and Miami,” she said. “Our lines are being cut by power lines; tree trimmers are cutting our lines. In one neighborhood, there was a Florida Power & Light line that caught fire yesterday, delaying our work.”
Kramer said the company has extended more than 1.5 million feet of cable and placed nearly
1,000 generators to power up key facilities. The generators range from large industrial-size models powering entire buildings to smaller household-type units chained to poles at the end of neighborhood streets, she said.
The restoration “is time consuming and we know people are frustrated and want their service back,” she said.
In an email, AT&T’s Starling said “more than 94 percent of affected network equipment” is back in service.
“We have a large force in the field working the remaining issues as each day we shrink the number of wireline customers whose services were affected by power outages and storm damage.”
More than 100 technicians have been brought in from out of state, Starling said, adding more technicians and equipment will be added.
“As power companies and other repair crews continue their restoration efforts, we are deploying additional power equipment where needed to restore wireline services.”
AT&T customers have taken to social media websites to vent their frustration with the outages, with customers on Friday continuing to complain about being out of service since the storm, and others saying they had service through the storm only to lose it several days later.
Earlier in the week, an AT&T customer in Fort Lauderdale told the Sun Sentinel that she was told by an AT&T repair technician that the company had experienced widespread failure of circuit boards or modules necessary to relay signals from street-level distribution boxes.
The company didn’t have enough replacement modules, nor the skilled technicians needed to install them, the customer said.
Other customers have recounted various versions of that explanation on social media, but AT&T isn’t providing details about why its outages are lasting so long.
Comcast and AT&T customers also were venting about the companies’ customer service operations.
Several complained about enduring long waits on hold only to be connected to overseas phone workers who offered no specific information about the reasons for outages or how long restoration would take.
Kramer said Comcast could improve how it relays outage information to its subscribers. “Getting out information to customers as quickly as possible is something we can do better, and we’ll look for better ways to do that,” she said.