GREENFIELD — The city’s telecommunications company GCET brought its internet service back up-and-running Thursday afternoon after a second internet outage affected half of its customers between Wednesday evening and Thursday afternoon.
After GCET announced a “serious hardware fault” on Monday night that resulted in two-thirds of customers losing internet, roughly half the city’s GCET customers lost internet again on Wednesday after new firmware brought bugs to the system.
By 4 p.m. Thursday; however, Lunt explained that the company was able to, with the help of a “great team of engineers” fix the firmware bugs that resulted in the second outage. Lunt said he expects the system should remain stable in the future.
“We’re really happy to get internet restored for our customers,” Lunt said following the restoration of service. “We realize that this has been a very difficult and challenging time for our customers and we are appreciative of their patience as we worked to remedy the issue.”
On GCET’s website, the company stated that after an outage, the network can remain unstable for a bit and advised customers still experiencing internet outages to unplug and re-plug their routers.
We also want to say that we have seen many good suggestions about how we can improve our communication during this crisis. We hear you. We will collect these suggestions to incorporate into a better communications plan going forward. When it is done, we will share it with everyone.
The company replaced its approximately $100,000 router — a job that GCET Director John Lunt said was covered by insurance — on Wednesday after it malfunctioned on Tuesday. When the new router was installed, Lunt said, the vendor required that GCET update its firmware.
“We shared our concerns that that would cause problems, as it often does. It introduces bugs. They were insistent. And so we said, yes, it took hours to do the level of updating they wanted. It is a very complex system, and it did, in fact, cause new bugs within the system,” Lunt explained in an interview Thursday morning. “The updates took until from about 2 p.m. yesterday to about 7:30 or 8 p.m. to go through. And then it took from that time we finally finished cleaning up all the bugs from the update at about 3:15 a.m. this morning.”
As of Thursday, Lunt explained that half of the city’s GCET customers have reconnected to the internet while the other half has not. He added that the city’s public safety departments and schools have internet connection.
GCET Board of Commissioners Chair Tim Farrell, in a statement published online on Thursday morning, explained that while GCET employees worked around the clock to restore service, he can not yet provide an estimated timeline of when the work should be complete.
“As both a board member and a GCET customer, I have lost sleep over this situation. I have heard from many friends and community members about how this outage has negatively impacted them. It is always frustrating to be in a position where you want to help but have little you can offer,” Farrell said. “Although this message does not change the timeline for resolution, I wanted to share what I can. The GCET team is working around the clock to restore service. They understand the frustration and anger many are feeling. They are not only employees, they are also community members and GCET customers. Their work is personal, and they know many of the people affected. That is not an easy place to be, especially when they feel the frustration directed at them.”
Farrell added that once service is fully restored, GCET’s Board of Directors and staff will meet to review what happened and brainstorm ways to improve in the future and restore the public’s confidence in the low-cost internet provider. He said he was “confident” that the company will “learn from this and ultimately emerge stronger.”
Chief of Staff for Mayor Ginny Desorgher Erin Anhalt, in an interview Thursday afternoon, commented that while the city acknowledges the efforts that GCET has put into remedying the issue, City Hall shares the same concerns and frustrations as the rest of the general public.
“We are, like the rest of the city, concerned and frustrated with the ongoing GCET outage. Their engineering team continues to work on the problem. However, GCET has not provided us with any firm restoration timelines,” Anhalt said. “The mayor met with Emergency Management on day one because of safety concerns for those residents who rely on GCET for telephone and communications. GCET is a municipal light plant and operates independently from the city. The GCET Board of Directors have full operational control and can be contacted for further inquiry.”