Frontier Communications repair crews continue to splice copper wires today to restore voice and hi-speed Internet services to the remaining customers on Redmond Way and in the Cleveland Street corridor.

At the Reporter’s deadline, crews worked diligently underground and were 80 percent finished in those areas as noted on Frontier’s update webpage (http://outage.frontier.com/Redmond-2014-09-20). Frontier listed a possible completion by tonight.

Today is day 14 of the outage that hit on the morning of Sept. 20, when an IMCO General Construction crew cut through fiber and copper cables and disrupted phone, television, hi-speed Internet and some 911 services. Originally, about 6,000 FiOS and copper customers were affected. Frontier restored 911 services on Sept. 21 and FiOS services on Sept. 24. More than 1,200 Redmond customers were minus copper services as of Sept. 24, but that number has significantly dwindled as workers notched 100 percent restoration on Education Hill, west of Avondale Road, Northeast 83rd Street/161st Avenue Northeast, 168th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 80th Street/Northeast 87th Street.

Frontier’s West Region Vice President of Engineering Brian Peterson and General Manager Bret Larsen surveyed the repair scene at the corner of Bear Creek Parkway and Redmond Way last Friday afternoon. Peterson noted that crews were working 24 hours a day to restore the nine cables.

“Progress is being made. It’s going to take us some time, but we’re going to get it done,” Peterson said at that time.

“We are working with the local business community to gain on-site access that may be necessary to test and validate network restoration. This continues to be a community effort, requiring the dedication, cooperation and assistance of everyone involved,”said Vicky Oxley, Frontier vice president and general manager for Washington state.

BUSINESSES AFFECTED

It was a turn-back-the-clock scenario for Ben Franklin Crafts and Frames owner Neil Ferguson and his 70 employees when the outage hit on Sept. 20.

From that Saturday until the evening of Sept. 23, they used an old-style manual credit-card slide machine before contacting AT&T and getting a mobile hot spot to run their computers and credit-card processing.

“That was a savior,” said Ferguson, who added that they were closed for a couple of hours on Sept. 20 to make adjustments.

At about 10:30 a.m. on Monday of this week, the business’ phone and Internet popped back into service.

A relieved Ferguson said everyone was glad to be back on track.

“It felt a lot better to be able to take the pressure off,” he said on Tuesday.

For Julie Wheeler, owner of Lakeridge Insurance Inc. in the 7900 block of 168th Avenue Northeast, experiencing the outage was like having “an unpaid forced vacation — it was very stressful.”

Her copper voice and broadband was back in action on Monday morning and she returned to her office after working from her Bellevue home last week.

It’s good to be back, Wheeler said, but she voiced frustration in Frontier’s “vague” updates as to when services would be restored to the affected areas.

“I think they were really caught flat-footed on this and how to respond,” said Wheeler, whose phones are run through Integra and leased with Frontier. “It was really kind of a mess and a lot of us lost a lot of money.”

The City of Redmond is working with all parties to establish a claims process.

While working from home, Wheeler was able to interact with customers through her personal email account and then she gave them her cell-phone number for further contact. As for her work voice mail, some customers were able to leave messages, but others weren’t able to do so.

“I’ll never really know how many people I wasn’t able to help, and that’s what bothers me,” she said.

To help customers impacted by the outage, public access Wi-Fi set up from 161st Avenue Northeast to 166th Avenue Northeast from Redmond Way to Cleveland Street.

Customers affected by the outage don’t need to call Frontier to receive out-of-service credits. Frontier’s credit process will be automatic and they will be applying credits based on service level and number of days without service. These credits will be applied within 30 days of the end of the outage event. Customers will see the credit on the subsequent bill and Frontier has already mailed letters to affected customers informing them of the restoration and credit process.