Mediacom working to keep Albany connected during storm recovery

ALBANY — As thousands of Albany area residents work to regain some sort of normalcy following the devastating storm that ripped through the community Jan. 2, crews from Mediacom have been working diligently to keep them connected.

Through emails sent to customers, Mediacom reported that more than 14,000 customers in Albany and the surrounding areas were without service the day after the storm, and additional company reports indicated more than 9,000 customers were impacted in Albany alone.

Phil Skinner, the company’s operations director for south Georgia, reported roughly a week after the storm that technicians and contractors had arrived in Albany the morning following the storm to begin the process of repairing the company’s hardline infrastructure and reconnecting drop connections to residences and businesses.

Since that time, the company has steadily reduced the number of customers without service, with Mediacom Communications Director Phyllis Peters reporting that as of noon Friday 1,639 modems were still offline compared to the 9,200 modems that were offline two and a half weeks ago. The company uses the number of modems on- and offline as a good indicator of progress, as many of the company’s cable customers also have Mediacom internet service.

“Our team has worked consistently long, long days,” said Peters. “Our team has been working Saturdays and Sundays, and it’s been reinforced by Mediacom employees that have come in from different areas. So there’s been an ambitious effort and a very high priority given to this.”

In Skinner’s initial report the first week of the storm, he said the company lost 28 miles of hardline that carries signal up and down city streets and alleyways. Peters added that because of the storm’s “ferocity,” an estimated 2,000-2,100 cables carrying signal from the nearest pole or tap to homes and businesses were also lost.

By midday Friday, the company had replaced cable to 920 homes and had more reconnections scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.

Peters said it was a complicated process to restore services in such a large area after millions of feet of fiber cable was destroyed or damaged by the storm, as were all the additional hardware needed to run cable service into residential areas. Because of the sheer volume of the damage, the company had to bring in technicians and considerable amounts of extra equipment from other areas of the country to assist with the process.

She said the restoration of cable to the 920 homes required 138,000 feet of cable that had to be strung from poles or taps to the home. Additionally, the local warehouse, which is receiving shipments from other company warehouses throughout its footprint to keep up with the demand, received 250,000 feet of new cable on Friday, which Peters said will be used over the “next 10 days or so to continue and complete the restoration.”

“We’re talking about miles of fiber,” she said. “And it’s very intricate splicing (to connect it). There’s been miles of fiber that that’s been damaged that has to be replaced that didn’t even interrupt service.”

Both Peters and Skinner said they were sensitive to people’s very vocal frustration over not having cable and internet services, and both, along with Mediacom as a whole, remain committed to working through the process in the best way possible, which has included, since day one, working closely with Albany Utilities to coordinate efforts.

Skinner explained that beginning January 3 either he or Mediacom Technical Operations Manager David Jones and their teams have attended morning strategy meetings with utility personnel and have been in daily contact with Albany Utilities Director Jimmy Norman.

Additionally, the team in Albany has been on daily conference calls with Peters and other corporate officials, keeping everyone abreast of progress in Albany, which Skinner said has been steady, despite reports circulating in some areas that Mediacom has been unresponsive to storm-related issues.

“Even though a customer may not have seen a Mediacom truck or a contractor on their street, we’re out there, just like Phyllis said, seven days a week, working as hard as we can to restore service to our customers,” he said. “Again, looking at that modem count number, we’ve made huge strides in the last two and half weeks, and we’ve whittled it down to, not a small number, we still have a ways to go, but it’s a lot better than it was the day after the storm.”

Although Skinner spoke Friday of a light at the end of the tunnel, he did say that progress is sometimes slow-going as crews have had to navigate through piles of debris on streets and alleys, which has impacted both power and cable restoration.

“There’s still a lot of debris out there, but our crews are working around it and getting cable up,” he said. “I was in a neighborhood, I think it was day before yesterday, and there was an alley that was completely blocked off. I guess residents and whatnot had stacked up trees and debris that were really high. I started down it in my vehicle and quickly realized I couldn’t get through there, but our construction crews had already replaced all the cable in that alley.”

Additionally, Skinner said his technicians, and those of other utility crews, have had to coordinate with property owners needing trees removed.

“I know of one situation where the power company went in and put up the power lines and then had to take them down because there was a tree removal company that had to remove some huge trees,” he said. “Had they not laid them down on the ground, they would have been torn down.

“So you do have some of that happening, too, where stuff gets put back up and then in the process of trying to clear out the debris it gets torn down again. It’s just another piece of the project.”

Yet another factor impacting service restoration is the weather. By and large, company contractors and technicians have not had to contend with difficult weather issues, but that had changed moving into the weekend, with rain predicted to continue throughout the day Sunday, followed by potentially damaging winds.

“We’re certainly concerned about it,” Skinner said Friday. “The last report I saw, it looks like it’s going to rain 100 percent (Saturday) and 100 percent on Sunday. We are going to have crews working both days, but I’m a little concerned about how much productivity they’re going to get done with all of the rain.

“And again, the last report that I saw, Sunday morning we might get some more straight-line wind, and certainly I’ve seen there’s a lot of pine trees that are leaning over on another tree and that other tree is the only thing that has kept it from hitting the ground.”

Because of the disruption of services for so many Albany area residents, Mediacom has tried since the outset to provide connectivity to customers and non-customers.

The company has set up three wifi stations in Albany, including a station at the Albany Civic Center on the South Washington side of the building, First Baptist Church on Oakland Parkway and in the Albany Mall parking lot, specifically behind Sears.

Peters said wifi at those locations can be accessed 24 hours a day by connecting to the wifi network named “Free Mediacom.”