WOW outage

[JEEP]

Although working just fine this morning, after being out from 11:30 am to around 6 pm, I've discovered that our television transmission is out - we have WOW cable. The screen has a message saying a temporary interruption is occuring & should be restored momentarily. That is not happening.

I went to WOW's webpage to find this:

WOW was experiencing widespread service outages in the Montgomery area throughout the day Tuesday, and it was not the only market affected.

The company provides phone, Internet and cable TV service in the River Region and across the nation. WOW's Twitter account replied to outage questions and complaints stretching from Alabama to Illinois.

Late Tuesday, it was telling customers that the company was "experiencing an attack on our system and have been going up and down all day." The company said service was starting to be restored but it could take "some time" to get to every customer.

The local customer service number wouldn’t connect at times throughout the morning. Customers who got through heard the following message:

“We’d like to apologize to all of our customers who may be experiencing difficulties connecting to the call center. We’re experiencing service issues presently with our cable, phone and Internet products. Our technicians are working to resolve this problem as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we do not have an estimated time for the completion of these repairs. So if you are calling to report intermittent connectivity issues, you do not need to remain on the line.”

The company said the problems were affecting "most markets" across the nation and that there was no official estimate for the full return of regular service.

Service tracking website downdetector.com showed WOW outages throughout the Southeast and Midwest.

I'm in a northeast suburb of Columbus, OH and so the Midwest. I could be wrong, but I'm thinking another cable TV provider experienced a similar widespread disruption in the recent past. I have to wonder, since there doesn't appear to be any significant/shocking news event presently occurring, if this (and perhaps the other incident if it also occurred) is a 'test run' to see how quickly/easily TV broadcasting can be taken down? Interesting that it is being described as an attack. (I jokingly said to my husband that ISIS is responsible since they're the terrorists most hateful of our freedoms > to watch mindless garbage punctuated by big pharma drug propaganda! )

 

[JEEP]

It appears Comcast experienced a "widespread outage" Sept. 2014:

PADUCAH, KY - Comcast service appears to be restored after an unknown outage impacted customers across both sides of the Ohio River Saturday night.

The outage seemed to be restored sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning. A reason for the outage was not given by Comcast, and attempts to contact officials with the cable company by West Kentucky Star have not yet been successful.

From the comment section:

9/29/2014
From what I can gather from internet discussion, Comcast "claims" that a fiber optic cable in Nashville was "cut" Saturday night. This is the ONLY cable feed for Western Kentucky and Southern Illinois, so everything went down, cable and internet. Apparently Comcast, despite all its resources is unable (or unwilling) to provide a backup system. Now they are claiming their fiber optic cable was damaged by a gunshot!

Customers had to contact Comcast to get a credit for disrupted service.

Also in June of 2015:

SAN FRANCISCO - Comcast plans to send proactive $5 refunds to customers on the West coast who dealt with degraded Internet service Monday night between 6:30 and 9:30 Pacific time, the company said.

Many customers reported intermittently poor service all day Monday but around 6:30 pm Pacific time it went out entirely for many.

The problem began with the failure of a piece of hardware in the company's Internet backbone on Monday morning, Comcast said is a blog post Tuesday. Normally the system would route traffic around the problem and customers would not experience any issues.

However on Monday "some of that traffic shifted in an unexpected way and overloaded" the local server capacity, which caused many customers to experience service interruptions, the post said.

A broad swath of California, Oregon and Washington was affected. Customers who used Comcast's Internet service were offline, though cable TV continued to function.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said the company will proactively send the credit to affected customers. The $5 refund is about five times what most customers pay for three hours of Internet connection.

"Comcast is often given one of the lowest rankings on consumer satisfaction surveys. In 2014 it was named "Worst Company in America" by Consumerist."

July 9, 2014
Continuing an aggressive communications barrage against the pay TV industry, broadcast group TVfreedom wrote its latest Congressional letter to perhaps its most sympathetic lawmaker, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), informing her that U.S. cable, satellite and telco video providers have experienced 3,050 service interruptions so far this year.

The Google search for the above concludes w/ this sentence but I can't find it in the linked article:
... have been suffering from unexplained outages since as early as Monday morning, ...

 

[JEEP]

Now this on the WOW website:

Downdetector
Netflix is having issues since 10:02 PM EST.
Are you also affected? Leave a message in the comments. ‪#‎Netflixdown‬

WOW is having issues since 5:43 PM EST - recent reports mainly originated from: Chicago, Naperville, Panama City, Columbus, Montgomery, Dothan, Detroit, Huntsville, Lawrence, and Madison.

However, WOW's official response Tweets insist there is no area wide outage.

EDIT:
Just now scrolled down Downdetector & more issues:

Cox is having issues since 9:40 PM EST.
Are you also affected? Leave a message in the comments. ‪#‎Coxdown‬

Whatsapp is having issues since 8:43 PM EST.
Are you also affected? Leave a message in the comments. ‪#‎Whatsappdown‬

Virgin Mobile is having issues since 6:43 PM EST.
Are you also affected? Leave a message in the comments. ‪#‎VirginMobiledown‬

Sprint is having issues since 5:28 PM EST.
Are you also affected? Leave a message in the comments. ‪#‎Sprintdown‬

Hmmm ...

 

[LQB]

Although working just fine this morning, after being out from 11:30 am to around 6 pm, I've discovered that our television transmission is out - we have WOW cable. The screen has a message saying a temporary interruption is occuring & should be restored momentarily. That is not happening.

The Dec 15 solar update from Suspicious 0bservers (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHSoxioQtwZeQaRnO5_9AJB2RmevUpuPT) noted a coronal hole stream impact that appeared to cause:

1) three transformer fires
2) an AT&T fiber backbone failure
3) transient V shutdown of an Indian Rocks nuclear reactor
4) transient V shutdown of a UK reactor

The outage you describe may be related to #2.

 

[JEEP]

Although working just fine this morning, after being out from 11:30 am to around 6 pm, I've discovered that our television transmission is out - we have WOW cable. The screen has a message saying a temporary interruption is occuring & should be restored momentarily. That is not happening.

The Dec 15 solar update from Suspicious 0bservers (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHSoxioQtwZeQaRnO5_9AJB2RmevUpuPT) noted a coronal hole stream impact that appeared to cause:

1) three transformer fires
2) an AT&T fiber backbone failure
3) transient V shutdown of an Indian Rocks nuclear reactor
4) transient V shutdown of a UK reactor

The outage you describe may be related to #2.

Just before 9 a.m. & cable still out. Have AT&T landline unaffected as is WOW internet. Downdetector last update:
Nintendo eShop is having issues since 1:32 AM EST.
Are you also affected? Leave a message in the comments. ‪#‎NintendoeShopdown‬

Previously viewed comments that hackers could be the problem or the "phantom non-redundant fiber optic line ". Interesting if it turns out to be a solar event.

 

[JEEP]

Call left to report outage netted no result. Only after getting an actual real person technician were instructions given/followed that immediately restored service. I imagine this could have been resolved shortly after initial outage & that WOW didn't do anything to alleviate the problem except wait for complaint calls.

Will be dropping WOW in the very near future!

 

[Deleted member 4737]

I have direct TV here in the Midwest and it has been out for two days with no explanation.