Islands experience data outage

Internet, LTE, T-Mobile and other cell phone providers in the San Juan Islands experienced a service outage on Wednesday, July 12.

Rock Island’s Facebook page is providing regular updates on its investigation into the interruption. At approximately 1 p.m., Rock Island posted that there was an outage on San Juan Island, shortly thereafter, the interruption was reported from numerous locations throughout the islands.

“The current outage appears to be a mainland break between Fidalgo and Seattle and is affecting multiple carriers,” a status from Rock Island reported.

At approximately 5 p.m., Rock Island said that service for fiber customers had been restored as well as connectivity for T-Mobile customers. Other cell carriers were still down as was San Juan Island’s DSL at the time.

At 8:15 p.m., Rock Island posted an update saying:

“So you all know the location on Route 20 Spur before the ferry turn off. [A] Large vehicle clipped the fiber cable, damging [sic] some fibers inside. A very diffiuclt [sic] fix given other fibers are still functional and passing traffic. The crews onsite have a long night ahead of them. DSL traffic county wide will continue to be down until the full repair is complete. LTE and Fiber traffic will be up but may see congestion impacts. We need more folks to read a book tonight than watching netflix [sic]. Updates as we get them.”

Then, at approximately 11 p.m., Rock Island announced that everything was operating once again.