Outages hit local Charter customers

A network outage that left Charter Communications customers throughout Havre with intermittent or no internet and telephone service Monday afternoon, has been resolved, acompany representative said.

Brian Anderson, communications director for Charter, said the disruption in services was caused by a “routing issue between servers” that has since been remedied by rebooting or restarting some equipment in order to restore service. Charter could not say how many customers were affected.

Charter says the disruption began around 4 p.m. However, people were commenting on the Havre Daily News facebook page and other local chat groups of problems with their internet and telephone connections as early as 3:30 p.m. Television service apperently was not interrupted.

The disruption sparked chaos for many individuals and businesses throughout the Hi-Line.

At least three people were seen at the local Charter office on West Second Street complaining of problems with their connection. Charter employees present refused to comment at the time and instead referred reporters to a Charter Corporate spokesperson who confirmed that there was indeed an issue and that they were in the process of diagnosing the problem.

“Our State Farm Agency had no phone service with outage this afternoon,” Anthony Cammon wrote on the Havre Daily NewsFacebook page. “ Catastrophe + claims + no phones = not good.”

Charter said services were largely reestablished at 8:45 p.m. local time. However, access was not immediately restored to all customers affected, given that the reboot’s effect can take time to be felt throughout affected area, though they did say all service should restored shortly.

Anderson said Charter will continue to monitor the situation and promptly respond to any situation affecting their customers.

Monday’s incident was not the first time Charter subscribers have experienced network outages. In July and August 2014 malfunctioning equipment led to similar network outages.