Comcast customers in the Park City area seem to have been impacted by service outages since midmorning Wednesday.
Pinebrook resident Larry Rose noticed his internet was down around 10 a.m. Wednesday. First, he called Comcast, who confirmed there was an outage and they had sent out service trucks to address it. Then, Rose posted on the neighborhood social media site Nextdoor to find out if any other residents in the area were without an internet connection.
“Basically, everybody who has responded is down, and so that would cover Pinebrook and Jeremy [Ranch],” Rose said.
Telephone, TV and internet services appear to be impacted by what Comcast’s website calls an unplanned outage. More than 2,500 customers are affected.
Donna Van Buren lives in Park City proper. She spoke to a Comcast representative earlier in the day, who explained what happened.
“What I was told was that a dump truck, or a truck that was digging, hit fiber optics of Comcast Xfinity at 1450 S. 2200 East," Van Buren said. "When I was told that address, I said, 'wait a minute, that's Salt Lake City,' and they said yes.”
KPCW hasn’t been able to contact Comcast and confirm that a fiber line was damaged, but Trevor Adrian of Park City-based provider Wicked Fast Internet says, with an outage impacting so many customers, there are two possibilities for what may have happened.
“If there’s 2,500 customers down, that’s definitely what they refer to as a data center event or a fiber event, and either one of those will take down thousands to tens of thousands of customers," Adrian said. "It does happen. Usually it happens once or twice a year.”
Adrian says Wicked Fast Interet has experienced an outage at this sort of level in the past six months, though this outage isn’t affecting Wicked Fast customers. If a fiber line is cut, he says it’s not easy to repair.
“It's a very complicated procedure, but the people that do it are experts, and that's all they do all day long," Adrian said. "They call it splicing fiber, and that's where you literally will connect two pieces of fiber that has a hole in it a little bit thicker than your hair, and they have to line everything up so there's no obstruction. It has to be absolutely perfect.”
The Summit County Library system does have internet access, and a representative from the library says there are plenty of computers—as well as wifi access—available for those who need it.
Comcast’s website estimates the problem will be resolved by 4 p.m. Wednesday.
