As the state opens an investigation into the cause of last week’s multi-day Internet outage, early estimates indicate that economic losses could be in the millions of dollars.
Verizon Communications cell phone service was also down for more than 48 hours, but a company spokesperson did not respond to questions regarding the geographic extent and number of customers affected by the outage in an email.
“Some customers in Taos experienced an outage after a third party accidentally cut three of our fiber lines,” the spokesperson said in a two-sentence response. “Our team worked quickly and service has since been restored.”
Xfinity, whose Internet-based services in Taos rely on Lumen Technologies fiber lines that were cut by crews working on the NM 68US 64 road project on Paseo del Pueblo Norte, said “all of our customers in Taos, about 1,000 in total”, were affected. The company was the only one Taos News spoke to that offered to compensate its customers.
“Customers can easily request a one-time credit for this outage through the Xfinity Status Center in My Account,” the spokesperson said. “Clients can log in with their XFINITY ID at comca.st/3bOgFm and click on the ‘Check Eligibility’ link listed under their current services. They can also contact us anytime by calling 1-800- XFINITY extension.
“We know any time without service is frustrating and we apologize for any inconvenience to our customers,” the spokesperson added.
Economy and public safety
A local Internet company did not hesitate to provide a rough estimate of the impact of the outage.
“We estimate that many millions in lost revenue are the result of this cut by customers of our Brownrice Internet website alone,” said Oban Lambie, systems administrator for TaosNet and Brownrice Internet, a Taos-based provider that hosts over 13,000 websites, webcams and email addresses from around the world in its Taos data center. TaosNet also serves municipal and county government websites in Taos County and Santa Fe County.
“Our local TaosNet customers who work online and our local business customers who process credit card transactions over phone lines and the Internet have probably experienced similar problems [losses] even,” Lambie said. And, of course, it’s hard to put an exact number on how much production and revenue local businesses suffered from not being able to make or receive phone calls, but even that number is certainly huge. Not to mention critical medical, police and government services who experienced massive communication difficulties during the outage.”
It could be weeks before a full account of probable business losses and other impacts is cataloged, according to Taos Town Manager Andrew Gonzales, former director of broadband for Kit Carson Internet that hasn’t suffered a disruption, thanks to built-in redundancies in his system.
He told the Taos City Council during its Tuesday (June 13) meeting that rural communities like Taos suffer from a lack of federal regulation around the reliability of Internet-based services. Gonzales noted that companies like Lumen Technologies, whose public-facing name is CenturyLink, often seek public money to build infrastructure, especially in underserved areas.
“This is something that keeps happening in northern New Mexico and we’ve seen it in our lifetime, at least I can tell, probably four times where we’ve had these widespread internet outages and loss of service,” Gonzales told the advise. “And I guess my biggest fear is that it happens in the event of a natural disaster or fire, which has happened before; or even worse, in an event with mass casualties.”
Brittany Lamendola, chief nurse at Holy Cross Medical Center, told Taos News the hospital activated its emergency response plan during the outage, using radios to communicate while phones were down.
Was the outage the fault of a single contractor? Or is a powerline observer, project manager, or someone else within the hierarchy of construction companies associated with the road project to blame?
Regardless of who is responsible for the physical destruction of fiber optic lines, experts agreed that one company could have had multiple contingencies built into its network: Lumen.
“We were led to believe by Lumen that the local fiber we lease from them was completely redundant, when in fact [the June 5] the disruption revealed that it’s clearly not,” Lambie said.
In a strongly worded three-page letter to the New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission on Tuesday (June 13), Gonzales asked for a full account of what caused the outage, which he noted began at 3:19 pm on June 5. .
“It is egregious and irresponsible for a large investor-owned company like Lumen to charge for and deliver a service susceptible to fiber cuts without built-in redundancy,” he wrote. “While I’m sure there will be arguments that the redundancy exists, it’s evident with the most recent outage that if the redundancy exists, it’s inches away from the separation and within the same trench.”
In an email response to a list of questions from the Taos News, Lumen did not address the redundancy issue, stating only that the company was “aware that some customers in the Taos, New Mexico area have recently suffered a disruption in service due to a road construction crew mistakenly drilling our fiber lines.”
“Contractors should call 811 before excavating and use caution when excavating major traffic arteries where most utility lines are located,” said Linda Johnson, director of corporate communications for Lumen. “Our technicians have worked hard to resolve this as quickly as possible because we know how important it is to stay in touch.
The New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission, which oversees public utilities and other businesses operating within the state, is investigating the incident, which caused widespread outages in Internet service, business phone systems based on Internet and Verizon Communications cell phone networks for more than 48 hours as of last Monday (June 5).
The commission’s Pipeline Safety Bureau “is conducting a third-party damage investigation under the Excavation Act and PRC rules to determine any negligent violations,” according to spokesman Patrick Rodriguez. “If there are probable violations, the Pipeline Safety Bureau will issue probable violation notice letters with possible enforcement actions.”
Despite construction crews in the area hitting underground natural gas, water and electricity lines during the three-year roadwork along the short stretch of Paseo del Pueblo in downtown Taos, the Public Regulatory Commission said that last week’s fiber cut was the first underground facility strike notified of in connection with the NM 68US 64 road project.
“This is the first damage we have been notified of in connection with this project,” Rodriguez said, noting that “User damage was reported to Center NM 811 at 4:42 pm June 5.”
“Telecommunications is by far the largest utility to suffer damage from mining in New Mexico,” Rodriguez added.
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