UPDATE: Windstream fiber cut interrupts services in S. Ga., Florida

Kasmira Smith, The Moultrie Observer, Ga.
·2 min read

Jan. 19—Update: The updated story adds a post shared from Windstream Communication's Twitter.

MOULTRIE, Ga. — Residents and businesses across the county, including The Moultrie Observer, experienced an internet blackout on Wednesday.

The blackout mainly affected customers of Windstream Communications, a phone service, broadband internet and TV service. Two separate network events were blamed.

South Georgia and Florida customers lost voice and internet service around 8:30 Wednesday morning, according to Windstream and Go Kinetic Home's Twitter.

"We are working to correct a dual-cause outage impacting WIN customers in S. Georgia. Storm damage impacted our network in Griffin, GA, and there is a fiber cut north of Atlanta. WIN continues to work on damage repair and on rerouting traffic to restore service ASAP," the company posted Wednesday afternoon.

The company assured its customers the outage was not a cyber event.

Moultrie was greatly affected and was listed along with eight other counties as "a most reported location" during the outage, according to Down Detector.

The Observer's phone lines were restored and the internet services were operating at slow speeds until approximately 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. Other entities around the county were also impacted such as Colquitt County School District.

"To my knowledge, the biggest impact on the district was phone lines. Our internet worked for the most part. It was a little slow but we were still able to get on the internet and send/receive emails. As of this morning, it appears all services have been restored," Colquitt County School District Chief Communication Officer Angela Hobby told The Observer Thursday morning.

As of Thursday morning, Moultrie City Manager Pete Dillard was not aware of local customers who receive services from CNS Next experiencing service interruptions.

Some Mediacom customers also experienced disruptions Wednesday afternoon.

"We had a small outage in Moultrie yesterday that impacted roughly 55 customers between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. We have a maintenance crew checking lines and equipment in that area today [to] make sure everything is working correctly," Thomas J. Larsen, the Mediacom Communications Senior Vice President of Government and Public Relations, said by email Thursday.

Windstream took to Twitter Thursday with an update on the issues.

"WIN engineers, network operations and field techs rerouted much of the broadband traffic in S. GA at about 11 p.m. Eastern, restoring most customers to service. Work continues to repair the fiber damage that caused the outage," Windstream shared.

Later Thursday afternoon they shared, "The fiber cut north of Atlanta that was one part of a dual-cause outage impacting WIN customers in S. Georgia has been repaired, and all network services are restored. We appreciate our customers' patience during this event."