UPDATE: We have a new statement from LFT Fiber Director Michael D. Soileau on the outage:
I want to share an important update regarding the service issues many of you experienced overnight. Although we are still waiting for official confirmation, it appears that restoration efforts have been completed and many customers are already seeing connection returning to normal. Our team will continue to monitor the network closely to ensure everything stabilizes as expected.
I also want to recap what led to this disruption so you have a clear understanding of what happened. The outage began with a major issue on a regional fiber route used by one of our upstream partners. A section of the underground conduit that carries their fiber collapsed, trapping and damaging the cable inside it. Their crews have been working throughout the night to pump out water, remove debris, pull new fiber through the damaged area, and fully repair it.
Because LFT Fiber relies on several transport routes to move traffic outside our local network, those routes are designed to be physically diverse so that one can serve as a backup for the other. During this incident, we learned that two of the routes supplied to us were running along the same physical path without our knowledge. When that path was damaged, both routes were affected simultaneously, which is why the impact was more significant than it should have been.
We do have additional backup paths in place, and they have been carrying as much traffic as possible, but with two major routes down at once, the remaining paths were pushed to capacity. This is what caused the slower speeds and intermittent connectivity periods that many customers experienced.
Throughout this event, our team has been working around the clock to monitor the network, reroute traffic where possible, support our customers, and communicate with our upstream partner so repairs could move as quickly as possible. We are pushing for formal confirmation that all fiber splicing and restoration work has been completed, and as soon as we receive it, we will share it on our website and Facebook page.
As we advance, we are working closely with our upstream partner to resolve the routing issue so this situation does not happen again. We are also reviewing our capacity and redundancy plans to further strengthen our network.
Reliable connectivity is essential, and I know how disruptive an outage like this can be. Thanks for your continued support and your business. We don't take it for granted.
Early Wednesday, officials said that LFT Fiber customers continued to see service disruptions.
Tuesday afternoon, LFT Fiber officials posted information on social media about "severe connectivity degradation or loss of internet and phone service."
"This is due to a cut on a main Lumen fiber line in Texas impacting the entire region," the post states. "Lumen is one of the major backbone providers that connects regional networks like ours to the wider internet, so damage to their network can disrupt service for multiple across the area."
Then last night about 11 p.m. there was an update, stating crews were still onsite trying to repair the damaged line.
Just before 7 a.m. Wednesday, the post was updated to report that service disruption was "still ongoing."
Repair crews are still working on the damaged line, but there still was no ETA on restoration.
"Customers may continue to experience reduced speeds or intermittent connectivity while repairs are underway," the post states. "As overall network demand decreases, some improvement may occur, but service will still be impacted until teh work is complete."
There also was an apology this morning:
"We know how disruptive this is and want you to know we are pushing for updates and doing everything we can to work with Lumen to support the repair process. We appreciate your patience and will share more information as soon as we receive it."
