ASHEBORO N.C. (ACME NEWS) — A widespread internet outage affecting large parts of Randolph County Wednesday has been linked to two separate fiber lines damaged during construction work.
- The outage began around 3 p.m. Wednesday and disrupted internet, telephone, and cell services for Brightspeed and AT&T customers.
- Randolph County Emergency Services posted to social media around 6 p.m., warning that they were experincing “degraded phone and internet services.”
According to Brightspeed, the outage stemmed from two separate incidents in which construction crews, working on unrelated projects, damaged fiber lines that are part of the company’s network in Pittsboro and Southern Pines.
“While we have implemented redundancy in our network to help mitigate outages, this was a unique event,” Brightspeed stated in an email. “Hours after the Pittsboro line cut, while repair was underway, we learned of the Southern Pines line damage that impacted the redundancy in our network.”
Brightspeed’s fiber lines support connectivity for a range of customers, including homes, businesses, municipalities, and wireless carriers, the company explained. “Damage to fiber lines can impact wireline and wireless services,” the statement added.
Most impacted customers had service restored by 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, according to Brightspeed. However, as of late Thursday, the company noted that a small number of customers remained without service, but noted that repairs were ongoing.
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