COLUMBIA — If you’re a Mediacom Internet or telephone customer in Columbia, you might have found yourself without service on Monday night and early Tuesday morning and wondering what was up with that. The Missourian talked with Randy Hollis, senior manager of government relations for Mediacom, to find out what caused this outage and what you can do if you find your Internet service down.
Q: What caused last night’s outage?
A: “The outage was caused by a fiber cut between Springfield and Jefferson City that was caused by Monday’s ice storm,” Hollis said, adding that he knew no specifics about how it happened.
Q: How wide-reaching was the outage?
A: “It ended up affecting Internet customers in Jefferson City and about half of customers in Columbia,” Hollis said. It did not affect MU, the Columbia Public School District, the city of Columbia or Boone Hospital Center, representatives for those entities said.
Q: What time did it start, and when was service restored?
A: “The line went down about 9:30 last night and came back up in Jefferson City about 8:30 a.m. and in Columbia about 9:30 a.m.,” Hollis said.
Q: Have you received many complaints?
A: Hollis said he was unaware of the number of complaints because they are handled by a customer support call center.
Q: What should customers do if they find themselves without Internet or cable service?
A: “They should call our toll-free number on our Web site,” Hollis said. That number is 800-874-2924. The other Mediacom number in the Columbia phone book has been disconnected.
Q: What does Mediacom do in situations such as the ice storm to manage possible service outages?
A: “We always have personnel ready to take care of a problem,” Hollis said. “Whatever the situation, we are always going to pull in as many people as possible to fix the problem.”