South Florida Customers Still Hit By Service Outages

Even though power has been restored in South Florida areas after the Hurricane Irma, residents in these regions are still concerned because the television and internet service in the area has not yet been restored. Reports from several reliable sources indicate that thousands of customers in South Florida still have no access to TV and internet services. Unfortunately, even the best internet service providers in the area have refused to share details on when the service will be restored.

One of the leading internet providers in the country, Comcast Corporation^® recently stated that they have restored their service to about 80 percent of subscribers in the tri-county region. They also added that they restored the service to over 78,000 customers in the last 24 hours or so. On the other hand, several AT&T^® U-Verse customers complained that they are still experiencing outages and the provider has not explained why the outages are persisting.

An AT&T^® customer from Fort Lauderdale stated that an AT&T^® technician who recently visited her home said that the telecom company has suffered a widespread problem with circuit boards, which are installed in the distribution boxes right at the ends of residential streets. Each one of these boxes serves over 200 households. The technician also told her that the telecom giant doesn’t have qualified technicians or an adequate number of replacement devices to reinstall the damaged ones.

Another AT&T^® customer claimed that the service outages were not solely due to the hurricane. The user said, “This is a software/hardware problem. When the neighborhood boxes went down for lack of power, they did not come back up correctly.” However, AT&T^® has still not yet responded to these allegations. Moreover, they did not share any details on when the services will be restored and how the telecom company is planning to compensate their customers.

AT&T^® Spokeswoman Kelly Starling stated, “It is not equipment or staffing that is our greatest challenge. It is the ongoing lack of commercial power.” When she was informed that some customers with service outages have power in their homes, Starling said, “Just because your power is on does not mean the U-Verse box at the end of the street is still on.”

She added, “We have made significant progress in restoring wireline services for customers in Florida, with more than 80 percent of affected network equipment back in service. Our technicians are working to restore service to the remaining customers as quickly and safely as conditions allow. Restoration efforts with power companies in Florida are ongoing; we are working to deploy additional power equipment to maintain and restore wireline service.”