BendBroadband outage hits 1,000s, including St. Charles

A double-whammy power outage caused an Internet and phone outage affecting thousands of BendBroadband’s customers Thursday morning, including St. Charles Bend, which postponed some elective surgeries and urged the public to reach patients by cellphone, officials said.

The power outage hit around 7:30 a.m. and affected BendBroadband’s primary and backup power lines, said DeAnne Boegli, national communications manager for Telephone and Data Systems Inc. (TDS), BendBroadband’s parent company, based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Boegli said it apparently affected all customers, though she declined to divulge the number of customers they serve. Boegli said she didn’t believe the company’s data center was impacted fully, as it has its own backup power source.

Engineers were investigating to determine why the redundant power line also lost service, Boegli said, but “they were able to restore and get on an emergency system” within about 30 minutes.

“A majority of our customers were back up within 45 minutes,” she said, but “it does take a while to get people back up. Different parts of the network took longer than others.”

BendBroadband’s initial Facebook post indicated the problem was affecting services in Bend, but that was later revised to say the problem also hit customers in Redmond, Sisters, Prineville, Madras and at Pronghorn Resort. The company said all of its services were restored about an hour after the initial announcement.

St. Charles Bend was among the customers affected by the network outage, but despite the relatively quick restoration on BendBroadband’s end, “it just took awhile to return to normal operations,” said Lisa Goodman, public information officer for St. Charles Health System..

Earlier in the day, St. Charles sent a tweet indicating they were “experiencing an intermittent network outage affecting phones and internet service at all hospitals and clinics.”

“If you are trying to reach a loved one in our facilities, please try calling their personal cellphone. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the health system added.

Goodman said it took until about 2 p.m. to send an “all clear” after all services were restored.

“Some surgeries were postponed” as a result of the issues, Goodman said. “When we have a network outage, we have downtime procedures we follow, so this is something we’re prepared to handle.”

Attendees at the Bend Chamber’s Real Estate Forecast Breakfast at The Riverhouse on the Deschutes were informed of the outage as Chamber President Katy Brooks advised people to disconnect from the facility’s wi-fi and use their own carrier’s service for online polling during the presentations.