Columbia resident says Mediacom outage impacted his work-from-home
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Columbia resident Richard Martin is frustrated with Mediacom after multiple outages this week has negatively affected his work day.
Martin, a Mediacom customer, works from home -- like six in 10 American workers, according to Pew Research Center -- and when his internet went out, he could no longer continue his work.
Martin said this is not a new problem; he looked into switching internet providers, but Mediacom is the only company that provides high-speed to his neighborhood.
"It's always going in and out, you can pretty much ask anybody," Martin said.
Martin's wife was also impacted by the outages. She was taking a timed midterm for her online class when the internet went out.
"We had to like try to use the 5-G or 4-G hotspot on our phone," Martin said. "We had to like set that up on our phone, and she was able to finish her midterm, but before that she was pretty concerned about it."
After two days of little to no internet access for some Mid-Missouri Mediacom customers, the outages appear to be resolved.
The popular internet outage site Downdector showed few outage reports late Thursday morning for Mediacom customers in Columbia or Jefferson City as of Thursday morning. The reports were down from Wednesday afternoon when the company reported widespread outages.
Wednesday at 3 p.m., the site showed 126 outage reports in Columbia and 43 reports in Jefferson City.
The widespread outage was first noticed Tuesday. Mediacom Tweeted Tuesday saying, "We know an outage is causing technical difficulties and are working diligently to restore service. We will post an update here when more information becomes available."
Although an update was never posted to Mediacom's Twitter, spokesperson Phyllis Peters said Tuesday's outage was caused by a software bug on a Cisco router that was outside Mediacom's control.
"Mediacom and Cisco engineers performed several reboots and software updates, and also added replacement equipment in order to restore services to affected customers," Peters said. "This was not an electronics failure, although that was a suspected cause at the early outset of the issue."
Mediacom engineers addressed the problem Tuesday, but a software malfunction led to more outages Wednesday in parts of Missouri and Iowa.
"We recognize how vitally important it is to maintain connections 24/7, and we apologize for the frustration and disruption this caused customers," Peters said.
