Tampa Bay is experiencing internet outages
Many Spectrum customers across Tampa Bay woke up Saturday morning without internet. And for some AT&T customers, no data or cell service either.
Some small businesses couldn’t process payments and Tropicana Field officials scrambled to tee up a backup server before a marquee game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees.
A spokesperson for Spectrum internet service said the widespread outage was caused by an electrical fire on a utility pole that damaged a fiber cable. Customers as far south as Manatee County said they lost service, which began to be restored around 3 p.m. and was fully back by 4:30 p.m.
Lorelie Johnson of Charter Communications, a telecommunication company whose services are branded as Spectrum, said in an email around 12:30 p.m. that an early Saturday morning fire on the pole in Pinellas Park damaged fiber that delivered service to customers. She said Spectrum teams had to wait until a utility company worked on it and deemed the area safe for technicians to gain access and fix equipment.
An AT&T spokesperson confirmed late afternoon Saturday that some wireless customers in the St. Petersburg area may have been affected by an outage “on another carrier’s network.” She wrote in an email that as of the afternoon, service had been restored and is operating normally.
That morning, Johnson said technicians were working to resolve the issue and customers should see services come back online “over the next couple of hours.” She did not say how many customers were affected or how widespread the outage was.
When asked how the Pinellas Park pole fire could affect a large region, Johnson said she didn’t know. She also did not have information as to whether customers who experienced prolonged outages would get refunds or discounts, saying Spectrum was focused on restoring service.
Duke Energy spokesperson Ana Gibbs said in a text Saturday afternoon that there was a fire around 4:15 a.m. in the area of 7200 73rd St. N in Pinellas Park. A cause of the fire has not been determined, she said, and because of where the fire occurred on Duke’s grid, only 10 residential customers were affected. She said it was difficult to say if that pole fire was related to the Spectrum outage.
The service tracking website downdetector.com started citing reports of problems in the area around 6:45 a.m. By 8:48 a.m., reports of outages had spiked to over 1,000 in Tampa, with hundreds reported in St. Petersburg and dozens in Clearwater.
At Tropicana Field ahead of the 4:10 p.m. Rays game taking on the Yankees, security could not scan in attendees. Team representatives told a reporter they were working to get on a backup server. By 2:30 p.m., the scoreboard was up and running again.
On the social media platform X, several Spectrum customers reached out Saturday morning asking for updates in the St. Petersburg area. The account @Ask_Spectrum responded with no specifics as to what caused the outage or how widespread the outage is. The account said “fiber crews are working to repair the cable” and did not have an estimated time for restoration.
Times staff writer Kristie Ackert contributed to this report.
