An Internet outage miles away from the city was being blamed for disrupting Internet and phone service to customers of Shawano Municipal Utilities for most of the day Thursday.
SMU General Manager and City Administrator Brian Knapp said a fiber optic line “somewhere downstate” was cut, knocking offline the company that provides SMU with Internet service.
That in turn affected all of SMU’s phone customers because those phones also run off of the Internet.
“I.P. (Internet protocol) phones are great for their cost and their features, but they’re dependant on the Internet,” Knapp said.
SMU has 570 Internet customers, including 260 who also have phone service. All SMU’s Internet customers were affected.
The outage occurred mid-morning Thursday and services were fully restored by 7 p.m.
“We appreciate our customers’ patience,” Knapp said.
SMU itself was among those without service because the utility uses its own product, Knapp said.
Phone service at City Hall and the Police Department, which still use land lines, was unaffected.
Knapp said SMU would be looking at alternatives for more reliable phone service once the matter of the utility’s telecom network has been resolved.
The city had been working on a possible sale of the Internet and cable TV services, but not the phone service. Knapp said he could not comment on the status of that possible sale.
As for the utility’s phone service, he said, “we’ll be looking at alternatives for better service or at least something less dependent on the Internet.”
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