U.S. Cellular phone service back up after outage

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

For nearly 24 hours Tuesday and Wednesday, many folks in Charles City had to remember how to live without phone calls or text messages.

Around mid-afternoon on Tuesday, Charles City cellphone customers who use U.S. Cellular as a carrier began to notice “No Service” messages on their cellphones, and many reported not being able to send or receive phone calls or text messages. Others said calls and messages would go through very sporadically — a message sent might not be received for several hours.

The situation, reportedly caused by a sliced fiber optics line, lasted through Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning before being corrected by about 2 p.m. Wednesday.

According to a statement Tuesday afternoon by Appliance Plus, the U.S. Cellular provider in Charles City, “A fiber optic line was cut and interfering with all US Cellular Service. They are working on getting it back up as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”

Rachel Fox, manager at U.S. Cellular, went on to say that the repairs would be done in 4-5 hours, which would have meant they would be finished by early Tuesday evening. Fox later posted an update that said, “Guessing it might be worse than they thought.”

By Wednesday morning, several Charles City businesses and institutions were using Facebook and other internet social media outlets to inform customers and others of the situation.

“As many of you are aware, U.S. Cellular service is having difficulty yesterday and today,” Floyd County Emergency Management posted on its Facebook Page shortly before noon on Wednesday.

“This issue may cause some interruptions with Verizon phones or Mediacom as well,” the county message also said.

The post also said that customers would not be charged during the service interruption.

“They have had some calls on if there will be ‘charges’ on anyone’s bill. They said this interruption of service is due to a system shortage and there will be no charges due to this interruption,” the Facebook post said.

U.S. Cellular is a regional carrier which owns and operates the fifth-largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, serving 5 million customers in 426 markets in 23 states, according to its website.

The interruption resulted in no phone service through part of the Charles City School District Wednesday morning.

“Because of the fiber cut in the area, the Charles City High School and Charles City Middle School are without phone service this morning,” the district announced via social media early on Wednesday.

Anyone wishing to reach the school district was directed to do so via email or to call 641-257-6500 to reach someone to relay a message. The district announced that its phone system was back in working order at 1:59 p.m. Wednesday.

At about 1 p.m. on Wednesday, U.S. Cellular customers were told that service was back up, although many customers said that the service was still poor at that time and going in and out. Shortly thereafter, phone service seemed to be getting back to normal for most customers.

“US Cellular is back up,” the Charles City Police Department posted on its Facebook Page Wednesday at about 1:30 p.m. “You might need to restart your phone. Hopefully it stays working!”