For the third time in the last eight months, a failure in AT&T’s fiber optic line to Humboldt County knocked local AT&T customers offline for 12 hours or longer, while crews scramble to repair. Customers of most other internet service providers — including AT&T’s largest competitor, Suddenlink — had no problems, as those customers have access to redundant fiber optic lines out of the county.

AT&T has promised to someday lease space on the east-west fiber optic line to prevent the kinds of catastrophic communication failures that its customers suffer when its own line goes down.

Here’s the entirety of the AT&T statement that we’ve been awaiting all day:

Due to fiber damage caused by a fallen tree near the northern part of Stafford, some customers in the Humboldt County area may have experienced trouble with their wireless or wireline services during parts of last night and today. Our technicians worked to repair the damaged fiber and service is now running normally.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

###

PREVIOUSLY:

###

PREVIOUSLY