PORT TOWNSEND — The Internet was unavailable to WaveDivison Holdings customers on the North Olympic Peninsula on Wednesday morning after a contractor inadvertently sliced the cable that supported a backup system.
Some 30,000 customers in East Jefferson County, Sequim and Port Angeles, as well as in Port Orchard, were without Internet service from about 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., said Jennifer Jeter, Wave vice president of marketing.
WaveDivision Holdings, which provides cable, television and Internet service for Port Angeles, Sequim and East Jefferson County, had scheduled a routine maintenance upgrade for the system when the cable was sliced, Jeter said.
Services other than Internet were not affected, she said.
Wave has about 10,000 customers in East Jefferson County, where it is gradually taking over Internet, telephone and television cable operations from Broadstripe, which it absorbed earlier this year after Broadstripe filed for bankruptcy.
Jetter said she could not supply customer numbers for Port Angeles and Sequim, where the company had been providing service for many years before absorbing Broadstripe.
Jeter said Wave is replacing components in Port Townsend.
“Customers should already have noticed more efficient and faster access,” she said.
“We have already switched over the Internet backbone from Broadstripe to Wave.”
Wednesday’s outage was not related to the Wave/Broadband transition, Jeter said.
Unlike Broadband, Wave is offering three different options: slow (3 megabytes per second), medium (10 megabytes per second) and fast (18 megabytes per second).
Jeter said the 10 mbps option is the most popular, though many people are switching to higher speeds.
Customers can supply their own modems or routers, or rent them from Wave on a monthly basis.
“A lot of speed problems can be corrected by replacing the modem or the router,” Jeter said.
“If customers are getting slow service, we can come out to check the lines or replace the equipment if it was supplied by Broadstripe,” she said.
“We have access to a lot of the latest equipment, which Broadstripe did not.”
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.