Customers struggle through phone and internet outage east of Astoria
Jan. 13—Kim Minkoff is one of dozens of people who live east of Astoria who say they have been without phone and internet service since an icy winter storm in late December.
Thousands of homes, including Minkoff's in Svensen, lost power during the strong winds and heavy rains that battered the North Coast over the holidays. While Minkoff's power returned, she said it took nearly three weeks for her CenturyLink phone and internet service to be restored.
She said her service was restored Thursday night. However, it has briefly come and gone since late December, so it still feels like a waiting game.
Minkoff said she and other CenturyLink customers have tried calling and emailing the company for more information on when service will be restored and have gotten estimates for the following day.
She has even turned to local elected officials for help.
Minkoff said the outage affected her personally and professionally, since she and her husband operate a business making knives and cutting boards out of their home. "And I'm sure it has affected our business," she said.
But Minkoff is mostly concerned about her elderly friends and neighbors who don't have other means to call out, especially in case of an emergency.
Tracey Lucas, a spokeswoman for CenturyLink, which is being rebranded as Lumen Technologies, told The Astorian on Thursday afternoon that there are no active outages in the Astoria area.
"Without addresses or customer numbers, I cannot check with more specificity," she said in an email.
Clatsop County Commissioner Courtney Bangs said she has corresponded with more than two dozen affected customers, most of which are older residents who rely on their landlines. She thinks many more are affected.
Bangs, who represents the eastern portion of the county, said she has heard from constituents who said they reached out to CenturyLink about the outage but were told there was no outage in their area.
She said the county has been in communication with state Sen. Suzanne Weber about the issue.
Bangs said the outage is another example of the broadband access gap in rural parts of the county. She said CenturyLink is the dominant service provider in her district.
"It's just a single company. You have no options, no choice unless you can afford a satellite service," Bangs said. "And for many of our paycheck-to-paycheck, rural working families, satellite service is pretty expensive."
She hopes that engaging officials in Salem will lead to funding to help CenturyLink improve local infrastructure or lead to another company coming in to expand service.
"What I would like to see from Salem is that they look at our rural communities and see those rural communities as valuable," Bangs said. "Because they come here to visit and they come here to play and enjoy our forests and our natural resources, and I would like them to be able to have internet access, cellphone service. All things that will help them enjoy our beautiful area safely.
"And when we have incidences that put the hospital offline or put 911 service offline or eliminate call-out access, it then makes our beautiful area very unsafe. And so I just want them to invest in us."
Katy Pritchard, the chief of staff for Weber, a Tillamook Republican, said Weber's office has been in constant communication with CenturyLink.
"Having constituents without basic phone service is a public safety risk which is why the folks in Knappa/Svensen pay for home telephone service while many other areas no longer need to," Pritchard said in an email. "It is unacceptable to expect those paying for a phone line to be out of service for weeks.
"Sen. Weber, along with her constituents understand living in the Northwest, we are accustomed to outages of all kinds. However, this is beyond pale," she continued. "Senator has been very disappointed with the level of customer communications. CenturyLink can, and should do better."
Weber's office encouraged people without service to continue reaching out to their office.
