Frontier Customers Experience Phone, Internet Outage

June 6, 2011

An apparent equipment failure in Atmore left thousands of Frontier Communications customers without phone and internet for a period of time this morning. The outage included Frontier customers in Atmore, Walnut Hill, Bratt and Molino, as well as Monroeville and Camden, Ala.

The outage began at 10:37 a.m.  and included voice and data services such as DSL. The outage originally caused “toll isolation”, according to Karen Miller, spokesperson for Frontier — with customers at one point able to only call within their own phone exchange.

It appears that DSL and data services returned for most customers after a short period of time, but many customers continued to experience difficulties with voice calls until just after noon.

Walnut and Molino customers reported that they were able to call the Frontier service area — including Walnut Hill, Bratt, Molino and Atmore — but they were unable to call Pensacola, which is ordinarily a local phone call. Some long distance services were also involved in the outage.

A test call from NorthEscambia.com to Escambia County (Fla.) 911 indicated that 911 emergency calls were operable just after 11 a.m.

The outage appeared to be related to an equipment failure in Atmore, according to Miller.

Some Verizon Wireless customers also reported data and voice problems during the first few minutes of the outage, apparently because some of Verizon’s local towers connect to the phone network through Frontier.

Comments

9 Responses to “Frontier Customers Experience Phone, Internet Outage”

  1. Beegee on June 8th, 2011 5:55 pm

    We were without DSL for two days!!!!! I do hope they are planning to not charge us for those two lost days!!!!

  2. Bratt FL Citizen on June 7th, 2011 5:09 pm

    Never even realized there were any problems at all. These forms of Technology do not control my life or me. This is all very troubling to know the general society can come a to halt without these tools we have all become so dependent upon. This is all so SAD! What is truly troubling is that my older grandchildren think they can’t function without these devices and gadgets…….I feel technology has it’s place in our society in this Era of technology and it’s rapid growth. Hopely we would survive a total shoudown of the net if that happened temporarily. YIKES for those addicted to this stuff. I’m mesmorized by all this (technology) as well but we need to have alternative measures in place to communicate with one another. Just some thoughts hopefully for the good of society and the general population if we ever CRASH this WWW.

  3. livin in molino on June 6th, 2011 10:04 pm

    My DSL through Frontier goes out every Sunday. I hate this service.

  4. William on June 6th, 2011 8:30 pm

    >>>Actually, the DSL service went out at 10:30AM and was not restored until approximately 7:30PM!!

    For most, in North Escambia, it was back within minutes. Mine was back by 11:15 a.m. Not sure about Atmore. Their PR spokesman did not provide much info.

  5. Alan Bell on June 6th, 2011 8:20 pm

    Actually, the DSL service went out at 10:30AM and was not restored until approximately 7:30PM!! I called the number in the phone directory and they denied there was any type of outage in our area. They offered to “walk me through” a restore over the phone…however, I knew for a fact that 15 other businesses were also without service at the time of the call (which was 3:15PM this afternoon)!!

  6. irritated on June 6th, 2011 4:01 pm

    HMMM! had internet trouble this AM. Called Frontier, they denied any problems in this area. Basically just told me to try connecting again. Just called them now to let them know I am now aware there were problems this morning and they still do not have on their “info” that there have been any problems in Alabama. Suggested she read northescambia!

  7. William on June 6th, 2011 12:50 pm

    Scobie Wilcoxon wrote:
    >>Guess there is some merit to cell phones and air cards or MiFi for internet?

    Yes…and no. It appears Verizon, which has the most complete geographic coverage in North Escambia, also had a brief problem as a result of the Frontier outage. Some of the Verizon towers connect to the nationwide network via Frontier service at their towers.

    In my particular case in Walnut Hill, DSL went out, along with Frontier phones. My Blackberry was on Wi-fi in the office, using Frontier. I dropped it off Wi-fi and switched to Verizon, but that failed on the Blackberry. My Verizon aircard also failed.

    So no DSL, no landline, no Blackberry internet, no Verizon cellular phone and no Verizon aircard for a few minutes. (it was very hard for me to breathe!). I’m guessing the Verizon network “healed” itself and took other paths from Walnut Hill to the world.

    Both DSL and aircards are good options for some. I must say, however, in the past 5-6 years I’ve had way more Verizon outages than Frontier outages.

    (Checking our logs — looks like our traffic from Frontier users dropped to about zero about 11 a.m. Our traffic from Verizon Wireless and other cell phone carriers jumped during the outage period as people used their cell phones or aircards to access NorthEscambia.com. Overall, our traffic was normal during the period since many of our readers are on cable internet or other phone companies.)

  8. Scobie Wilcoxon on June 6th, 2011 12:06 pm

    Guess there is some merit to cell phones and air cards or MiFi for internet?

  9. Resident on June 6th, 2011 11:49 am

    Phones are still out.