Charleston Area Internet Outage on July 2, 2019: Follow-up

​This is a follow-up to last week’s post about the July 2nd Internet outage in Charleston. I met with the local Regional Channel Manager from WOW! Business, Jamison Cary. He offered additional information about the cause of the outage and shared WOW!’s actions to handle future service-affecting events.
 
​Jamison explained the interruption occurred

when two diverse 100 gigabyte long-haul fibers were cut by road crews doing highway construction along I-95. One was cut three separate times and the other was cut over 300 miles away. WOW!, and many other service providers use these long haul networks to deliver internet access. Both the primary and redundant routes were affected. The likelihood of two pathways being damaged at the same time is minuscule. Nonetheless, it took fiber crews working all night to replace over 396 pairs and 1,800 feet of fiber optic cable and conduit.
 
​WOW!'s customers in the Charleston area were unable to gain Internet access for about 18 hours in total. The company understands the importance of continuity of services and strives to prevent future interruptions. Currently, it is constructing a 100-gigabit fixed wireless long-haul connection to provide a third path of redundancy to help avoid such outages in the future.
 
I, Beth, appreciate Jamison’s willingness to speak with me and help me understand this complicated technology. If you have any additional questions about the WOW! Business network, he can be reached at [email protected].