GREENSBORO, N.C. — Spectrum customers across the Piedmont Triad are back online after a widespread outage.
Several viewers reached out to WFMY News 2 saying their Spectrum services stopped working around 4 p.m. Wednesday. Later that night, Spectrum said it had begun restoring services. Some viewers said their internet began working again between 10 p.m. to midnight.
As of Thursday morning, a company spokesperson told us all services had been restored.
Why did Spectrum go out?
The company said a third party damaged its fiber at a construction site located in Greensboro. To protect the network's integrity, Spectrum did not give more specifics of the location of the damage.
Spectrum also told us the outage wasn't statewide, and only impacted the Piedmont Triad area.
"Our technical teams worked to restore services as quickly as possible for those impacted customers across the Triad. All services have been restored - Services began being restored at approximately 9:15 p.m. (last night). We apologize for the service interruption," said Spectrum media contact Scott Pryzwansky.
North Carolina 811 said telecommunication damages, like this one, happen more often than you think.
"We see probably anywhere between 16,000 damages that we know of a year in North Carolina," said Louis Panzer, Executive Director NC 811.
Panzer also said these types of telecommunication damages are common.
"Telecommunications facilities are typically the most damaged facility in terms of type for a myriad of reasons," Panzer said. "But for one, it's very congested. There's a lot of different telecommunications companies providing fiber cable telephone services in the ground."
Not only do they take down phone lines and the internet they can also hurt local businesses.
"Folks are working from home, that they rely on high-speed internet for Zooms like this, for example. As you mentioned, banking institutions and ATMs that rely on that 911 services," Panzer said.
Can you be compensated for the outage?
We asked Pryzwansky about compensation for affected customers. Here's what he said:
"Impacted customers should work through our customer service team, who are best equipped to answer account-related questions. We’ll work with affected customers individually – as services may have been affected differently," he explained.
According to its policy, Spectrum says it doesn't reimburse customers for outages outside of Spectrum's control. In this case, the damage was caused by a third party, so any reimbursement is unlikely. However, like anything in customer service, you can always call the company to plead your case. The worst they can say is no.
Spectrum's 2024 Annual Customer Notice says in part: Unless otherwise required under applicable law, credits are not available for disruptions of service that are beyond Spectrum’s reasonable control, not reasonably foreseeable by Spectrum or in any way caused by the customer. Spectrum will otherwise provide the customer with the proportionate credit for qualifying outages that last for 4 or more consecutive hours, after such interruption is reported to us and the customer has requested a credit within 60 days after the conclusion of such service outage.
Spectrum's customer service line is 1-855-757-7328.
For many Triad families, they used the outage time to bond. They said taking a few hours to put screens away and pull out board games was refreshing.
"I had to get to introduce them to something I used to do. So it was like red light, green light, freeze tag. So like homemade games," April McCain said.
"I just really appreciate it being able to spend time with them without, you know, them defaulting to their devices," added Candace Nance.