Local businesses affected by Mediacom outages

Last edited 3:44 p.m., March 15, 2018

Statewide outages for Mediacom Communications Corp. (Nasdaq: MCCC) customers yesterday disrupted business and residential services.

Mediacom Communications Director Phyllis Peters said between 70,000 and 90,000 customers, including those in southwest Missouri, were affected after two separate accidents occurred within hours of each other.

Peters said separate construction crews unrelated to Mediacom accidentally took down aerial fiber cables near Cuba around 11 a.m. yesterday, followed by a 1:40 p.m. mishap with heavy equipment near Cameron that cut a portion of buried cable lines. Mediacom’s redundancy system was thrown off by the separate incidents, causing internet, phone and cable outages from early afternoon through as late as 8 p.m. in some areas, she said.

“Truly, the rarest in rare circumstances occurred,” Peters said. “We certainly apologize. We know how dependent people are, and we regret this happened.”

Reports surfaced online from local businesses that were impacted by the outages.

Social media posts about the outages included:
    •    Loehr Chiropractic and Acupuncture, which lost phone and internet service;
    •    Petsway, which notified customers its Springfield and Nixa locations were affected, with no phone service and limited transaction speeds;
    •    the Springfield-Greene County Library District, which indicated its Ash Grove and Willard branches did not have internet access;
    •    First Baptist Church of Strafford, which was unable to send an e-newsletter; and
    •    Whistle Stop Pizza in Ash Grove, which forwarded phone calls to the owner’s cellphone.

A Springfield Business Journal employee also observed outages at Orange Leaf, causing the 1368 E. Republic Road store to only accept cash.

Earlier in the week, local customers also reported outages for AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) service.

AT&T spokeswoman Katie Nagus said another company was working near Grand Avenue and Kansas Expressway when a fiber wire was cut.

“Technicians worked around the clock and the problem is fixed,” she said.