The Huntsville Item, Huntsville, TX

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April 25, 2007

Storm-related accident shuts down Internet service

Robbie Byrd

Google-less. Minus myspace. Without Wikipedia.

Sans Suddenlink.

As Suddenlink high-speed Internet customers began their day by checking their e-mail, reading the latest news on cnn.com, or just checking the weather before heading to work, they were all greeted with the same message: “The page cannot be displayed.”

A Suddenlink spokesperson said that all customers within Walker County were without Internet service for most of the day Wednesday.

The problem, said Josh Holland, coordinator of corporate communications, was a fiber optic line that was cut early Wednesday morning during thunderstorms that rolled through the Huntsville and Conroe area.

“It took down a lot of power lines, and our fiber (optic) lines were on those power lines,” Holland said. “We have spent (Wednesday) repairing what was damaged.”

Holland said they threw “the works” at the problem.

“We (called) every crew in the Huntsville area and brought in contractors from College Station and Conroe,” he said.

Suddenlink connects the county, city, Sam Houston State University and the Huntsville ISD, however, some sites were working while others were not.

Officials report that HISD campuses were without Internet access, while Walker County offices had Internet access.

Mark Adams, SHSU Associate Vice President for Information Resources, said that SHSU “was a customer of Suddenlink” and experienced some outages.

However, many students, professors and faculty were unaware of any outages.

Sam Houston Village resident manager Tim Cobb said he was unaware of any outages throughout the day.

“Seems to have worked fine all day,” he said.

Holland said the outage affected some 5,500 customers, but was unsure as to the extent of every customers problems.

The outage was first discovered around 4 a.m. Wednesday, and was repaired some 12 hours later, at approximately 4:20 p.m.

Holland said that the Walker County system is connected to the Conroe system to the switching office in Huntsville.

Customers who called the Suddenlink customer service line were initially told that the outage would be repaired by mid-morning Wednesday, but the extent of the damage prolonged the repair.

“Unfortunately, bad weather happens, but we (worked) to get it up as fast as possible,” Holland said.

Holland said that the last outage of this size was two years ago, when a gas line explosion caused a fiber line to be cut.

Walker County accounts for less than 1 percent of Suddenlink’s 1.4 million subscribers.

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