Cable TV, Cable Internet and home telephone service was restored to about 17,000 WOW! cable customers in the Northwest suburbs who were without service for most of Monday after a fiber-optic line was severed by another telecommunications company.

WOW! announced on their Facebook website at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday March 13, 2012 that service was restored to customers in Arlington Heights, Des Plaines, Glenview, Mount Prospect, Park Ridge, and Prospect Heights.

A fiber optic cable which carries all data for television, Internet, and telephone was severed at Golf Road somewhere in Schaumburg. Golf Road was shut down near the repair, according to WOW! Illinois Senior Vice President & General Manager, Kelvin Fee.

WOW! Facebook Alert Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 11:10 a.m.

Dear Valued WOW! Customer,

On Monday, March 12th WOW! experienced a major outage affecting most of our customers in the Northwest suburbs. A contractor doing work for another communications company cut our fiber at the comer of Golf Road and New Wilke Road at about 11:30AM. The damage was so severe that in order to replace the cable, Golf Road had to be shut down, cut and dug up. We were able to start bringing channels back up around midnight and the rest of our cable, internet and phone services were all restored by 4AM on Tuesday. We looked at all possibilities to bring our services back on line faster, but the only solution was to replace the damaged fiber cable.

Our team of employees dedicate themselves each day to provide you with an experience that lives up to our name. On rare occasions, events outside of our control undermine our ability to do that. We understand how this outage affected you and your family, so please know that we did everything we could do to get our service back up and running just as quickly as possible. This situation was one of the worst we have ever experienced and one that involved many other companies in order for us to get our service restored. I have already begun to review this situation with my team to see what we can learn that may help us in the future should something like this occur again.

I want to thank you for being a WOW! customer. Yesterday was a tough day for you and for us. I appreciate your patience as our employees worked tirelessly throughout the night to restore your service. Thank you again for your understanding.

Sincerely,
Kelvin Fee
Family Man ~ Coach ~ Golfer
Senior Vice President & General Manager – WOW! Illinois

WOW! has many loyal customers, who are emphatic about having the option of competition to Comcast.

Other telecommunications services are also vulnerable to cut lines, underground tunnel fires or flooding. In July, 1998 about 4,000 customers were without telephone service and dial-up Internet service for at least three days after a contractor for Nicor Gas cut two underground cables near Arlington Heights Road and Sigwalt Street, where the contractor was upgrading a Nicor underground pipeline. Telephone service was disrupted in an area in the boundaries of Sigwalt Street, Wilke Road, Magnolia Street, and Lincoln Lane to Davis Street. There were four additional cables situated near the severed cables. If all six cables were servered, about 12,000 telephone customers would have been without service.

Phone banks were set up by Ameritech, now AT&T, just outside the Arlington Heights Municipal Building, which were available for affected residents and businesses.

See also …
Chicago Tribune Phone Outage Fuels Outrage

Seed Newsvine

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