Echo has confirmed that Verizon Fios internet service has been restored in most areas of West Hempstead following an outage of more than 24 hours.
The outage happened on Juneteenth, a federal legal holiday when many residents were not working and so may have had minimal impact on business and those working from home, though it impacted local stores that rely on wifi and internet-based telephone service.
As of early Thursday morning (6/20) some residents said they were still waiting for service to be restored.
A local resident who is a Verizon employee not involved in internet service, posted information from a colleague throughout the outage sating that the problem was caused by a broken or severed fiber cable line near the Heatherwood construction site at the former National Wholesale Liquidators.
He posted on a neighborhood Facebook group: “I am so sorry you and your neighborhood are part of this outage! Our team is actively engaged in restoration services now and the estimated time of restoral is midnight tonight. One of the buildings in West Hempstead was being demolished yesterday and the demo-crew (not Verizon) hit the conduit destroying all our fiber cables … That is the bad news, but the good news is that the fix required us to place and splice 4 cables, and we are working on splicing the fourth and final one now. Once that is fixed you’ll be back online and the neighborhood will have service by midnight tonight.”
Local West Hempstead social media and WhatsApp group activity significantly increased among frustrated residents and 5G wireless service was slowed due to reduced bandwidth from heavy usage on TMobile and other networks.
Verizon has traditionally had a very good track record in the past on reliability and its Fios Internet and cable TV service is popular in the area. The hot and humid weather are additional factors the crews have to deal with to restore the community to its full digital strength.
