Phil Fernandez, Naples Daily News
·4 min read
Hurricane Ian isn't the only reason why Comcast-Xfinity service hasn't been restored in parts of Southwest Florida.
Its lines keep getting cut.
Over the weekend in the chaos of the cleanup, eight fiber connections that Comcast had just installed in Cape Coral got inadvertently slashed, said Mindy Kramer, a Comcast vice president.
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"The fiber cuts to our lines happen when power crews and debris removal trucks damage our fiber lines," Kramer said Monday. "These crews have heavy equipment, which unfortunately can sometimes end up damaging our lines. We work very closely with the power companies, but these things happen during the restoration process. When we have a fiber cut, it will temporarily interrupt service in whatever area that line feeds."
Xfinity service lost in Sarasota area, as well
The organization already has dealt with other mishaps.
Late Thursday, residents across Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte and Highland counties went off-line after a fiber optic line was inadvertently cut by a debris cleaning company in Sarasota County.
"We are currently working on the specific timeline for restoration by area so that we can provide customers with more details on when they can expect service back," Kramer said. "For those still out of service, this is because of pocket outages in neighborhoods. The localized outages are the result of a drop line that needs to be repaired or replaced either at the home or on a specific street."
She said more than 3,000 such lines have been repaired or replaced so far in Southwest Florida.
"We have drop crews out in full force to deal with these kinds of repairs," Kramer said. "In Naples, we have repaired nearly 400 of these lines."
It's also having more success north of Lee and Charlotte counties.
"I will tell you that in certain places, like the northern part of Sarasota County, we have restored more than 95 percent of our impacted customers," Kramer said. "Obviously as we go farther south, we saw much more damage to parts of our network infrastructure, requiring us to do a lot more work to restore services. (We) now have more than 1,700 personnel working on the restoration effort throughout Southwest Florida."
Forces from the Midwest and other parts of the South joined the effort that includes 800 trucks.
"The progress is strong, but we know that customers simply want their services back quickly," Kramer said. "We are doing everything possible to get every single customer back online."
Some on social media say they are spotting employees.
"Xfinity trucks arrived in my neighborhood bright and early, and their crew is picking up right where they left off last night behind my house," a McGregor Gardens man said Monday of his Fort Myers community. "Next door neighbor has a cable down from the pole. Across the street has had cable the whole time, so hopefully when they get this fixed I'll be up again. Finally seeing some progress."
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The crew of four to five, along with a bucket truck, had been there Sunday afternoon for three hours clearing debris with a saw and replacing equipment before resuming the efforts the next day, he said.
Summit Broadband, another Southwest Florida service, was compiling stats, which weren't available Monday afternoon.
"We are in pretty good shape but gathering details," said Danny Pate, executive vice president of operations.
Some folks remained without electric in the region Monday afternoon. In Collier, it's less than one percent, about 2,000. Lee: 5.6% or 27,500, according to state statistics.
Based at the Naples Daily News, Columnist Phil Fernandez (pfernandez@gannett.com) writes In the Know as part of the USA TODAY NETWORK. Support Democracy and subscribe to a newspaper.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Hurricane Ian: Thousands in SW Florida remain without Comcast service
