Quintillion repairs are complete, internet service restored

After three months since the Quintillion fiberoptic cable suffered a catastrophic failure on June 11, this week came the long-anticipated news: repairs have been completed and service is 100 percent restored, according to Quintillion President Mac McHale’s.

Local providers restored service to their networks and as of Tuesday, internet services are working again.

Chief Communications Officer for GCI Heather Handyside said GCI has verified the signal is working through the cable and steps were taken to restore services back to customers.

GCI changed traffic back from the backup network to the fiber channel, a process that took place during the ‘maintenance window’ when most of Alaska were asleep. “That’s the time we make changes in our network so they are the least disruptive to people,” Handyside said.

GCI services are completely restored. During the fiberoptic cable break GCI has provided customers with credits for internet and wireless. The 100 percent credit will end once fiberoptic service is restored, Handyside said.

Fastwyre, the other internet services provider in town, has not responded to requests for updates nor has the company communicated with its customers.

Cell phone troubles resolved

GCI notified the Nugget on Tuesday morning that cell phone service has been fully restored. Since September 7, GCI cell phone customers in Nome were unable to place or receive calls between mobile or landline phones, an issue that was unrelated to the fiberoptic cable.

GCI flew in a replacement piece of equipment last Friday which was unable to restore service. Handyside said they were able to “do some remote reprogramming of equipment” on Monday night. One back-up piece of equipment is still being worked on, according to Handyside, but the service was fully restored.

The Nome Police Department and Norton Sound Regional Hospital both had alternative phone numbers for GCI customers to use during this time.

Credits for GCI cell phone customers unable to make calls have not been established.

“Hopefully we’ll have the repair made at the same time that the wireless service is fully restored and if not, we’ll explore what credits look like for this particular piece of outage,” Handyside said.