Phone and internet services were knocked out Tuesday afternoon for three service providers in Door County after a main fiber optic cable was damaged by landscaping equipment. The outages happened around 1 p.m.
Mike Hogan, senior director of communications for Charter Communications (which owns and operates Spectrum), said in an email that landscaping equipment damaged the line while working in a secured area, resulting in outages for Spectrum customers. Katie Frey, senior manager of media and public relations for U.S. Cellular, stated that brush clearing work caused the damage, leading to outages for their customers.
Frontier Communications customers were also affected. Hogan confirmed that services were restored for Spectrum customers by 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Frey noted that U.S. Cellular services were restored Tuesday evening.
As of Wednesday morning, Frontier had not yet replied for information on the outages.
Fiber outage impacts Door County businesses
Jason Estes, owner of Sonny’s Italian Kitchen & Pizzeria in Sturgeon Bay, reported that his business was significantly impacted.
The loss of internet and phone service halted online ordering and credit card processing. Employees had to manually take credit card numbers and process transactions after services were restored around 8:30 p.m.
Estes, who has been in business for 28 years, said that while his Point-of-Sale (POS) system has failed in the past, this seven-hour outage was the longest he has experienced. He estimated the business lost about 30 percent of its daily revenue due to the outage.
Jon Calhoun, General Manager of Tadych’s Marketplace, indicated that the supermarket faced phone line issues but was able to continue operating registers and transactions throughout the day thanks to a secured internet connection. This incident highlights the vulnerabilities businesses face with reliance on internet services. According to Business Insider, small businesses can lose up to $40 million in productivity annually due to internet outages.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
