COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – The internet provider for the Coldwater Board of Public Utilities is blaming “a perfect storm of fiber issues” for the disruption of telecommunications service over the Fourth of July holiday.
CTS Telecom says in a statement that the CBPU provides Skitter TV to Coldwater residents through two diverse fiber connections, one from the north and one from the west.
The two fiber connections allow the Skitter TV hub to connect directly to the CBPU, and then be dispersed to Coldwater residents.
They are independent of each other and are designed ironically to minimize the possibility of an outage.
The northern fiber connection suffered damage Tuesday, which caused an equipment failure and an outage to the Skitter signal coming into Coldwater. Service was then restored by using the western route.
Then July 4, CTS says there was an unrelated incident which caused the western route to fail. That led to emergency measures being taken in order to direct the signal into Coldwater, which caused an extended outage for the Skitter TV service. Service was restored early Thursday morning.
Crews were able to fully restore full redundancy to the fiber path from the north early Friday morning, so the Skitter TV feed is no longer at risk. Both fiber connections are fully operational.
CBPU Director Jeff Budd says the telecommunications problems had nothing to do with Skitter TV equipment, but instead they basically did not have a signal for Skitter TV to operate.
