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Line cut leads to CenturyLink internet outages; service expected to be restored by 10 p.m. Tuesday

Vail Valley Century Link customers from Edwards to Dotsero were experiencing internet outages on Monday, Nov. 12, and Tuesday, Nov. 13 in Eagle County. Company officials said the outage was caused by a cut in a fiber-optic line.

EAGLE COUNTY — CenturyLink internet customers from Edwards to Dotsero reported service outages beginning in the late afternoon of Monday, Nov. 12. The outages lasted into Tuesday, Nov. 13.

In an email, CenturyLink spokeswoman Francie Dudrey wrote that the outage was caused by a cut in a fiber-optic line near Craig. Service in Routt County was also affected by the break. As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, the company’s automated customer service system expected service to be restored by 10 p.m.

While the service interruption in Eagle County wasn’t universal, it affected much of CenturyLink’s service area, which runs from Edwards west to Glenwood Canyon.



A post on the Eagle County Classifieds Facebook page asking about the extent of outages drew dozens of responses from customers throughout the western valley.

While the service outage was inconvenient to some, it was hard on those who work from home or whose offices are in the western valley.

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In an email, Leah Mayer, of Eagle, wrote that her family recently moved into an apartment that lacks cable TV and has only internet service. The family now uses a variety of options for TV watching on smart TVs.

“Last night was annoying because we couldn’t watch TV,” Mayer wrote. “Sometimes I miss old-fashioned TV.”

At the Bonfire Brewing building in Eagle, co-owner Amanda Jessen said that business had been affected by the outage. The brewers were still working on beer, but it crimped other business.

While the brewery’s point of sale system allows the business to run customer cards offline, the outage “reminds us how much we rely on it,” Jessen said.

In the Sweetwater area, resident Bill Sepmeier wrote in a facebook post that since Eagle County Schools depends on cloud apps, his kids were unable to retrieve or submit homework or work on continuing projects.

Another poster, Danielle Miller, wrote that she works remotely teaching English classes to Chinese students. She was able to do some work via her phone but was concerned she might not be able to run her scheduled classes.

Other residents also used the rec center to get work done.

Gypsum resident Michelle Cohn Levy said her daughter takes an online engineering class, and the family went to the rec center so she wouldn’t have to miss a session. Someone else at the center was working while Levy was there, she wrote.

Patricia Esperon, another Gypsum resident, is taking graduate classes at night.

“This is huge problem for me,” she wrote.

CenturyLink provides communications services to residential, business, wholesale and governmental customers in Colorado and the United States. As of Dec. 31, 2017, the company operated approximately 10.3 million total access lines and served approximately 5.7 million broadband subscribers across the United States.

Vail Daily Business Editor Scott Miller can be reached at smiller@vaildaily.com or 970-748-2930.


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