On July 11, some Sunset residents noticed they weren't receiving emails and web pages refused to load. Residents took to Facebook to find out that all Brightspeed customers in their community were without Internet. The outage stemmed from an underground Internet line that was cut after a contracted company began digging behind the Sunset Pharmacy at 907 Napoleon Ave., said resident Marie Elkins.
Customers were not notified about the outage, several residents said, and calls to Brightspeed's customer service yielded little in the way of information. The company insisted that the Internet would be restored the following day. It wasn't until Sunday evening that customers could connect. Even the public library could not connect to the web.
"We were all calling customer service. I would get a person, it sounded like they were reading a script," Elkins said, "I kept telling them that the line has been cut in town where I live and they're like 'we're not showing an outage in your area'."
The situation in Sunset illustrates a larger problem in rural areas throughout Louisiana, where smaller communities are left with few options for service providers.
Elkins and her husband are self-employed insurance agents. Their job relies heavily on connectivity and reliable Internet. But for days they had to rely on spotty phone hotspots.
"We both have wireless printers, so we needed to print things we weren't able to print," Elkins said, "The hotspots were hard to connect to at times, it's just a headache to have to get off and reconnect."
Along with hotspots being inconvenient for extended work, they are also expensive, Bridget Hargrave of Hargrave Plumbing in Sunset said.
With the Internet down she and her husband's had to use hotspots to complete day-to-day tasks. Hargrave was completing payroll when the outage occurred.
AT&T offers customers a 10-gigabyte mobile hotspot data increase for $15. Hargrave said within the five days Internet was out, she had to replenish the data twice.
"We run a business from our home, we cannot have any downtime," Hargrave said. "I got news for (Brightspeed), I'm not paying that. Whenever the bill comes through. I'm subtracting it off my bill."
Hargrave was also introducing new scheduling software for her business when the Internet went out. That outage meant that her company was missing jobs and having difficulty contacting customers.
"We pride ourselves in servicing our customers in a timely manner," Hargrave said, "this interfered with all aspects of our business. I am not pleased with Brightspeed at all."
Customers like Elkins and Hargrave are wondering if they will receive credit or a reduced Internet bill for the outage. Brightspeed does not have a listed corporate number and customer service was unable to respond to any questions.
The company that struck the line was Underground Construction Service, according to the Louisiana One Call website. The company submitted a dig ticket July 2. Companies can reply to dig permits and if they have lines in the area, can and should go out and mark them. Brightspeed responded to UCS's permit that the area was clear of their lines, Tyler Clark, owner of UCS said.
"They said we were good and didn't mark anything," Clark said, "I don't even think Brightspeed knew that was right there either... We hit Brightspeed phone lines two or three times a week because they don't locate anything."
The company that repaired the line was Gridsource, Louisiana One call records show. They filed for an emergency dig permit July 14. The Brightspeed lines were marked according to the filings.
Through federal and state grants, Louisiana is working with Internet service providers to expand into rural communities throughout the state. The digging that took out Brightspeed's line was part of those programs to bring fiber-optic Internet to Sunset.
However, the rollout of faster Internet in rural areas is still far away, Hargrave said. She hopes that the introduction of new providers will make sure issues like this do not happen.
"These people have us where they want us, so they don't really have to give us the customer service you would get from a small hometown provider," Hargrave said.
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