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Ely Echo Editorial
A cellular outage that wiped out Verizon and made AT&T difficult to use appears to have been caused by a disruption in a fiber circuit between Ely and planet Earth. This has made for a difficult week as the outage started around 4 p.m. Monday and stretched into Thursday afternoon.
While sending text messages, checking Facebook, or uploading Snapchat videos may not be the most important losses, not being able to call for help should rank at the top of the priority list.
We pride ourselves on living at the end of the road. But being at the end of the fiber line sucks. We’ve been without proper services for over 72 hours with little or no communication from communication companies.
Public safety officials get all excited when you can’t dial 911 to an outage. Not being able to dial anyone is a bit bigger deal, yet we’ve heard nothing from them or any elected officials.
The only person who has been providing updates with any authenticity has been Isaac Olson of Treehouse Broadband. He posted the following on Thursday afternoon: “Cellular Outage in Ely Area: “On August 6th, we noticed our fiber circuit through Consolidated go offline (luckily we have a backup). At the same time, Verizon and AT&T service in the area went to limited/no connection.
“Our ticket with Consolidated originally stated estimated time of repair of 10am this morning.
“In the last hour, the estimated time of repair changed to 8/12. I requested an escalation both through their ticket system and my account manager, mentioning how they’re currently impacting Verizon and AT&T as well.
“I’ll provide updates as possible here. Thank you Isaac for taking the time to help get this problem resolved. And for those of you trying to determine if you should go with a major company to provide your internet service, use this situation to help make that decision.
Big companies don’t really concern themselves with us little old folks at the end of the road. We’re nothing more than a minuscule bump on a profit and loss statement. Treehouse Broadband is locally owned and operated and they truly care about their customers and the service provided.
That’s a lot more than we can say about Verizon and AT&T.
