Fidium Fiber said Thursday evening that service was restored across its network after internet and phone outages hit customers in Maine and other parts of Northern New England. The disruption began during the afternoon and left some customers unable to get online or make calls for hours.
People started reporting trouble around 3 p.m., when dozens of outage complaints appeared on Downdetector from Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. By 3:40 p.m., Fidium Fiber said it was experiencing technical issues, and later said it had a network issue and was rerouting traffic to get service back up. By about 5:45 p.m., a spokesperson said service was fully restored.
The outage was broad enough to affect more than home internet. Fidium Fiber’s website was briefly slowed by the surge of customers looking for information, and its phone support was also taken offline for a time before both came back later in the day. In Maine, complaints came from the Midcoast, Manchester, Portland, South Portland and Westbrook, among other places. The Portland Conservatory of Music said on Facebook that it had lost internet and phone service because of the outage.
That said, the company’s update did not describe what caused the network problem in the first place, and it also left open the possibility that not every customer was instantly back to normal. Fidium Fiber said some customers were still being stabilized and could have remaining issues after the main restoration was announced.
For customers who were still having trouble, the company said the next step was to restart equipment or call 1-844-434-3486 for help. The quick restoration eased the immediate disruption, but the unanswered question is the one customers usually care about first: what failed in the network long enough to knock out both service and support across the region.
