Internet service provided by GCI was knocked out when Wrangell was pummeled by a gusty storm on Nov. 30.
Technicians were able to restore service to customers by Dec. 3, however, there have been complaints in recent days that the service comes and goes.
Residents have taken to the Wrangell Community Group on Facebook to ask if others were experiencing outages — and to complain. Some were seeing disruptions every day, sometimes up to five hours with no service.
“It’s my understanding that severe weather Nov. 30 through Dec. 3 caused power outages that disrupted service. Conditions were cleared on Dec. 3, and our technicians were able to restore service,” Heather Handyside, vice president of communications for GCI, said on Wednesday. “With the exception of a short issue on Dec. 12, service was steady until an interruption on Dec. 20 that was resolved the same day.”
Customers have been reporting the same problem is still happening the past two days. Handyside didn’t say what issue was causing the latest disruption in service.
“Our team is working to first restore service to customers and then to determine if the recent service issues are linked,” Handyside said. “If so, we’ll work on resolving those issues in order to prevent the situation in the future.”
The outages don’t seem to be affecting other Southeast communities, she said.
GCI is hopeful that a fix will be found as quickly as it was on Monday. Handyside said technicians have all the information they need, so customers don’t need to report the problem. But if there’s a specific issue to report, the best way is to contact the support team through GCI’s Facebook page, she said.
The most recent round of outages impacted residences and businesses from Alpine gas station, on the corner of Zimovia Highway and Wood Street, to the downtown area.
“We apologize for the inconvenience for our customers,” she said. “We’re working to get service restored as quickly as possible.”
Connections were restored for most on Wednesday night.
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