An outage in Premier Communications Voice and Internet service this morning affected a large part of their service area.  According to Premier Communications Spokesperson Scott Te Stroete, the outage happened after a routine maintenance window was completed.  Te Stroete says these routine maintenance events usually occur without incident and service interruption, but sometimes things just happen.  In this case, some of the equipment was not starting up after the maintenance was complete.

Te Stroete says they have a protocol to follow that includes getting the word out to their service area, gathering their technical groups to discuss the issue, what happened, what’s affected, what they can do to fix it, and determine a timeline for a resolution.  Every twenty minutes they regroup to review until the service is restored. 

Te Stroete says the outage lasted about 90-minutes, mostly affecting the western side of their service area.  The outage was sporadic in some areas, meaning partial service would be working, while other areas experienced a total outage. Full service began coming back online around 8:15 this morning.  Te Stroete says he appreciates the patience of their service clients while the issues was being resolved.