Thousands of Columbus-area CableOne customers remain without service Monday morning after a hardware failure crashed the network around 6 p.m. Sunday night.
A steady stream of people, many whom rely upon CableOne for not only cable television but also telephone and Internet service, began arriving at the company’s College Street office as soon as the doors opened this morning.
General Manager David Lusby said the outage is limited to the Columbus area and is a hardware issue, unrelated to Tropical Storm Isaac. He did not know how many customers were affected or when the issue would be resolved but said technicians were waiting for delivery of a part in order to make repairs. The part was expected to arrive around 10 a.m.
The Columbus Police Department, Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office and Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle were not affected. The hospital is connected to a corporate network out of Atlanta, and the Sheriff’s Office uses AT&T for its Internet service. Though the police department is a CableOne customer, CPD Director of Technology Walter Wickham said the department’s Internet was working as of 9 a.m. today.
But for many local businesses, the outage affected day-to-day operations, especially those which rely on CableOne for bundled Internet, television and phone service.
Karen Stanley, owner of public relations firm NeonFrog, is one of those business owners. Today, she was running her business via cellphone but was unable to access her email, which is also through CableOne. She said the outage has affected her business as well as her productivity.
“Not only does it slow me down, it slows my clients down and (slows down) the work I can get done for them,” she said.
Brent Davidson, owner of Coffee House on 5th, was grateful today that he uses another provider and was unaffected.
“Ninety-nine percent of what we do is through the Internet, especially debit cards,” he said.
New Hope resident Walter Worthy was among the homeowners who lined up at the local office to glean information and complain about the inconvenience. He said his Internet service has been spotty for more than a month.
“I’m tired of it,” he said. “If I could get a DSL line I would.”
Dispatch reporter Sarah Fowler contributed to this report.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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