GREENVILLE -- The last thousands of Spectrum and AT&T customers without internet service a month after Helene tore through are still awaiting repairs amid ever-shifting deadlines and murky outage information.
Spectrum has yet again shifted its self-imposed deadline -- now to Oct. 24.
Widely criticized for its lack of communication with customers after the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 hurricane and quickly wrecked the Carolinas, the company's effort at setting a deadline has been a fluid one.
The first deadline for all customers to be restored in South Carolina, Oct. 16, was set two weeks after mounting public pressure.
The company, a tradename of Charter Communications, then pushed the deadline to Oct. 21 and then, upon missing that target and apologizing for not being transparent, has since removed outage information it put in place weeks after the storm.
Greenville News Spectrum pushes back full repair deadline to next week as 34K still without internet in SC By David Ferrara [email protected]
In an email to The Post and Courier on Oct. 22, a Spectrum spokeswoman said Oct. 24 is the new deadline to restore service to "accessible homes in Greenville."
Meanwhile, customers of prominent provider AT&T have also been without service in South Carolina since the storm, but the company said in an email "more than 99 percent" have had their service restored. The company didn't, however, respond to The Post and Courier's specific questions regarding how many customers are without service nor when service will be fully restored.
In South Carolina, Spectrum says about 7,400 customers in Greenville and Spartanburg counties do not have service, according to an 11:20 a.m. Oct. 22 update on their site.
Throughout Helene's aftermath, customers have experienced restoration of internet service, only to lose it again.
The 5,358 outages in Greenville County Oct. 22 was an uptick from the night before, when the company reported 895 less.
In a message to customers Oct. 18, Spectrum executive vice president Cliff Hagan apologized for the company's lack of communication.
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"I want to acknowledge the executive team -- not our technicians -- dropped the ball and I understand your frustration," Hagan said. "We should have been more transparent; with more timely and detailed communications regarding what we were seeing on-the-ground, the extensive work that will be needed to repair our network, and timelines for the work."
Spectrum service outages in S.C.
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In North Carolina, Spectrum says 11,593 customers in Buncombe, Henderson and Mitchell counties do not have service. Customers in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee are back online, the company said on its site.
"Repairs are taking longer than we initially anticipated due to damage to hundreds of miles of our network, our inability to safely access certain areas, and the need to return to make repairs in areas where there is construction activity and infrastructure needs to be rebuilt," the Spectrum spokeswoman said.
Remaining customers affected are in both rural and urban areas.
An AT&T outage map shows several outages in Greenville County zip codes, but does not say how many customers are impacted.
"While we continue to make progress, some work remains to be done. To speed the restoration process, we have hundreds of technicians working seven days a week to restore services to our friends, our neighbors, and our community," an AT&T spokeswoman said.
In the week following the historic storm, power was restored and roads were cleared, but internet service remained hard to come by.
Pressure to provide a timeline for restoration mounted as the company issued homogenous statements to The Post and Courier and other media when questioned about its dearth of public communication on the outages.
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In statements, Spectrum largely leaned on power outages and the dynamic of areas being unsafe for crews to get to making network repairs difficult.
On Oct. 11, Spectrum provided its first date for when there would be "complete restoration to all accessible locations with power" in South Carolina as Oct. 16, according to a statement a company spokesman sent to The Post and Courier.
At the same time, the company released its first county-by-county outage details, which The Post and Courier tracked in the days that followed.