I love the stock image of an ethernet cable with only phone capabilities having continuity. Good choice from whoever made that decision.

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A company finally engaging in something resembling customer service or doing their fucking job after being contacted by journalists threatening to expose their behavior? That’s never happened before and certainly won’t happen again. /s

I have been saying for a while now (10 years+) that internet should be treated like gas, electricity and water. Today its an essential service.

However, at least in OZ, ISPs are not accountable for outages, and should be.

Here, if electricity is out for a certain period, you can claim for spoilage and if its longer than a govt set period, the electricity company must pay you.

same for the other services (but rarely happens).

ISPs should be considered an essential service, and if they are out for 4hrs, then it should start costing by paying the customer.

And possibly there should be clauses for outages that have “catastrophic outcomes” (im not gonna define it, but you get the idea) should result in suitable claims for damages.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Helen Marie Plourde, an 86-year-old Minnesota resident, just spent over a month without home Internet and phone service because CenturyLink failed to fix a problem that began in July.

Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, put Deloney in touch with us.

"For the past month, [Plourde] has been going to my mom and dad’s house to use the Internet two times a day because hers went out and CenturyLink can’t be bothered fixing it.

That didn’t end up being necessary because CenturyLink sprang into action after Ars contacted the company’s media relations team on Thursday night.

A CenturyLink technician went to Plourde’s home on Friday morning and fixed a line problem on a nearby street, restoring her Internet and VoIP phone service.

On Friday morning, CenturyLink told Ars that “the help ticket did not escalate through Velocity’s process properly, so it wasn’t in our system.”

The original article contains 510 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

I’ve been in the communications industry for almost 30 years & I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything good about CenturyLink.

the ILEC not giving a sh;it about a reseller’s customer on their network? surprise surprise.

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Note to self, never use a reseller. Ever.

Not being funny but this is hardly criminal, what would a 86 year old do without Internet?

Unless something is life threatening, we’ve had towns without Internet for a month due to contractor cutting the fibre.