UTILITIES: Have you had CenturyLink trouble this week? (Tuesday update)

ORIGINAL SATURDAY REPORT: Unlike public utilities such as power and water, outages are hard to quantify with private utilities like cable internet/TV, due to the general lack of openly accessible outage maps. In recent days we’ve received several reports of CenturyLink internet trouble in West Seattle, with Chris emailing today, “My fiber Internet connection from CenturyLink has been down since Tuesday in the Alki area” and saying that CL has told him it’s an “area outage” while offering multiple estimates of “next day” restoration that so far haven’t borne out. So we’re wondering how widespread this is. If it’s happened to you too – a comment or email (westseattleblog@gmail.com) would be helpful as we try to sleuth.

TUESDAY UPDATE: After numerous reader comments of note below, we’ve been in contact with CenturyLink/Lumen, which at first claimed there was no outage, but finally just now acknowledged there’s a cut cable:

“We have a damaged fiber in the area affecting some customers. This service disruption is due to challenges in locating and repairing the cut. Our team must access several manholes on the side of the road where cars continue to park. We have displayed no parking signs and may have access to one manhole and then the 2nd is blocked by a car with no way to notify the owner to remove the vehicle.

“New signs have been placed tonight to be able to access the locations and begin repairing the damage. We know how important these services are and our team will work quickly to repair the fiber and restore service once they have access to the fiber in the ground.

“Please thank your readers for their patience and assistance to honor the no parking signs.”

54 Replies to "UTILITIES: Have you had CenturyLink trouble this week? (Tuesday update)"

  • Eric L August 27, 2022 (9:20 pm)

    I’m on alki and mine has also been out since Tuesday.  Latest update is the 29th (but I think that pretty much just means they don’t work Sunday).   And their support call in system won’t let you talk to a person if it determines your account has an outage.

  • Mellow Kitty August 27, 2022 (9:24 pm)

    My CenturyLink DSL had been spotty for a week and the wifi is cutting in and out. 

  • WSGuy August 27, 2022 (9:36 pm)

    I would report mine but my internet is currently down. 

  • Deb August 27, 2022 (10:09 pm)

    I have century link and it has been spotty since going down earlier this past week as well. 

  • rsws August 27, 2022 (10:09 pm)

    I’m a few blocks SE of West Seattle High and I have had no CL fiber issues recently.

  • emcat8 August 27, 2022 (10:27 pm)

    I’m in Seaview and have not had any serious trouble, though have had a few times where things took a while to load.

  • Clinker August 27, 2022 (10:34 pm)

    Clink gig fiber has been solid near Madison MS this week.

  • TinaR August 28, 2022 (7:01 am)

    I’ve been fine in Genesee Hill.

  • JE August 28, 2022 (7:50 am)

    Our Century Link has been down all week. We live in Highland Park

  • Kelsey August 28, 2022 (8:17 am)

    We are on Alki and been out since Tuesday as well. Have called every day and only get a canned response every time. I finally had someone on Friday tell me that the fiber has been cut and they are working to repair it but that was the most information I was able to get.

  • Jake Forrest August 28, 2022 (8:47 am)

    My service has been out since 3pm on Tuesday 

  • Rah August 28, 2022 (9:54 am)

    I’m in Upper Alki- mine’s been spotty too!

  • Casey August 28, 2022 (10:10 am)

    A couple of weeks ago, we were informed by CL that our old copper wires were obsolete and needed to be replaced with fiber.  This was done Friday afternoon, and phone and internet service have been fine since.  If they have been doing upgrades in the area (we’re at  44th & Dakota, north of the Alaska Junction), that could be putting a strain on the system in general. 

  • Becca August 28, 2022 (10:17 am)

    We live on 62nd off Alki have been disconnected as well since Tuesday around 3pm. Century Link has pushed the date for the fix several times already.

  • cdine August 28, 2022 (10:48 am)

    Centurylink small business fiber (Really no different than residential fiber with a different contract) has been mostly fine in Sunrise Heights, but I did have 15 minutes of downtime on Aug 21, which was actually remarkable – it’s been very reliable otherwise. I’m a geek, and yes, I really do monitor my connection to that level :)

  • Ryan August 28, 2022 (10:50 am)

    My centurylink fiber has had an outage since 3:02 pm on Tuesday. I’m near 62nd Ave SW and Admiral.

  • Christian Alki August 28, 2022 (10:55 am)

    Day 6 of no internet in Alki

  • Isabel August 28, 2022 (12:53 pm)

    My Xfinity service has been out for the most part since Thursday evening in North Admiral. Not showing any outages nor solid answers from Comcast.

  • Greg August 28, 2022 (1:12 pm)

    Xfinity went out around 6pm Thursday and has been working intermittently since; currently not working – modem can’t connect to ISP

  • Jennifer B August 28, 2022 (4:57 pm)

    Also spotty for about a week in Highland Park

  • Milo Fonbil August 28, 2022 (7:36 pm)

    Here in the University District of North Seattle, multiple residents’ land-line telephone service have been down for almost ONE MONTH (since at least July 30, 2022). CenturyLink is being very secretive about this non-flattering situation – but their representative has stated in writing to me on several occasions that repeated vandalism and theft at an outside terminal box has seemingly rendered them utterly helpless and incapable of creating/installing a steel container that would protect their wiring facilities. Have gone to a Seattle Times reporter who has previously reported on similar events – which will likely cause CenturyLink to go entirely silent. A friend with telephony industry contacts in the area recently told me that CenturyLink has been leaving their Copper land-lines (for telephone as well as DSL) facilities in a state of intentional neglect and utter dis-repair – and now these hapless and hopeless clowns cannot even manage to secure their facilities from Copper wire theft and repeated vandalism. Pathetic.

  • SLJ August 28, 2022 (9:10 pm)

    Our xfinity wifi has been terrible for over a month, even after calling and resetting it. I was thinking of checking out century link, but I guess not. What do others recommend?

    • Delta August 29, 2022 (2:06 am)

      Comcast is terrible in terms of how they treat customers, and their signal strength at Alki was pretty bad, but uptime was pretty good.

      CenturyLink has multi-day outages on their copper and fiber products (I’m not impacted by this last thing, but others I know have seen similar outages). The fiber product has been wonderful for me over the last couple years.

      T-Mobile has their cellular product that does ~125 down. I fought with their router to change SSID/password for a while before just giving up and putting up a printout with a QR code.

      There’s commentary to be made about internet in the US and being limited by your address, but I’ll leave that for another thread.

  • Ryan August 29, 2022 (1:41 pm)

    Day 7: Still no Centurylink service in alki.  Starting to read books again. May introduce self to neighbors.   Wondering if I really ever had internet or was it  just a mirage.

  • Becca August 29, 2022 (2:38 pm)

    Current status:Expected Repair Date08-29-2022Expected Repair Time10:00 PM

    • Becca August 30, 2022 (8:20 am)

      Update this AM – chat says: I have pulled up your account. Upon checking, it shows here that there was an outage on the area Please be informed that it was already escalated to our technicians and the estimated time and date to restore will be on 08-31-2022 around 12:00 AM CST.Troubleshooter says: 08-30-2022; Expected repair time 10:00PM Not very hopeful that this will be resolved any time soon. 

      • Becca August 31, 2022 (11:29 am)

        Update, we are connected again.

  • Kelsey August 29, 2022 (3:25 pm)

    I just spoke to a CenturyLink repair man who was parking to fix my neighbors connection issues and he had no idea that there was an outage in the area let alone any information on the repair.  He said it has not been on his radar at all.

  • Sam August 29, 2022 (8:56 pm)

    My resolution time was just extended to August 30th at 7pm. Asked about any adjustments to our bill and they gave us $40 credit. 

  • Chris August 29, 2022 (9:22 pm)

    In Alki… we’ve also been without service since Tuesday. CenturyLink’s been doing an excellent job of giving us as little information as possible on the situation. They just keep moving back the resolution estimate on a daily basis, to the point that it’s obvious the “estimate” doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a button they press. Thanks for posting about it, it’s useful to know it’s not just our place.

  • Sara August 30, 2022 (7:08 am)

    In Alki as well. Our outage has been updated to 10pm tonight which means it’s looking like it will never come back on. 

  • Chris August 30, 2022 (7:41 am)

    I reached out to some contacts I have and managed to get in touch with a Centurylink account rep for large enterprises.  He looked up the outage and told me this is a “large fiber cut”, which lines up with what another commenter here said.  None of his commercial customers are impacted,  so he’s trying to dig up more details for me, such as a more accurate repair estimate.I’ll be sure to update here if I learn anything new

    • Chris August 30, 2022 (12:14 pm)

      I got an update from my contact.  It sounds like this is a much larger impact than I would have expected, given that it seems isolated to the Alki area.  I don’t have an exact figure but sounds like on the magnitude of “multiple thousands of customers”.No word on a more accurate estimate.

    • Chris August 31, 2022 (1:38 pm)

      I’m finally back online in Alki, hopefully it remains that way.  Thanks again to WSB for following up on this.

  • Paula August 30, 2022 (1:59 pm)

    I just submitted a tip to the Seattle times about this. Maybe if enough people write in they’ll publish something and century link will have to hurry up. Desperate times call for desperate measures. 

  • Sam August 30, 2022 (2:05 pm)

    Resolution date updated to August 31st at 7pm, 60th and Admiral 

  • H August 30, 2022 (3:50 pm)

    My CL fiber internet has also been out since last Tuesday. They keep sending techs to my home when the problem is not at my home. I’ve talked ti several people over the phone and 3 techs at home and no one can figure out why it’s taken a week with no resolution in sight. I’be spoken to two gentlemen that seem ti know what they’re talking about and they can’t even get answers. They just see that appointments are made for my home and CL just reschedules them for next day. This is insane! 

  • Milo Fonbil August 30, 2022 (4:30 pm)

    Update on the nearby to the CenturyLink Lakeview Central Office location north of University District in Seattle vandalism and wire-theft affecting hundreds of customers for one full month time so far. Technicians have for the moment finally restored service, in the case of my land-line. However, a steel construction, and thus hoped to be more secure “cross-box” planned and on order has yet to be received and installed. They are at the moment merely depending on the fact that the thieves who were re-vandalizing the site on a nightly basis have for whatever reasons, for the time being, ceased from continually re-damaging the facilities. CenturyLink seems woefully ill-prepared for such situations as this – even after the vandalism and wire-theft which took place under the Magnolia Bridge in January of 2022. Evidently, company resources are being committed to laying fiber-optic cables in the hopes of increasing profits, while at the same neglecting their many miles of Copper land-lines upon which DSL internet as well as telephone customers depend. They have fully earned their awful reputation.

  • WSB August 30, 2022 (4:49 pm)

    After more than a day of back and forth – starting with CL’s rep claiming there was no outage (I kept replying with key comments from this thread) – I finally just got this:

    “We have a damaged fiber in the area affecting some customers. This service disruption is due to challenges in locating and repairing the cut. Our team must access several manholes on the side of the road where cars continue to park. We have displayed no parking signs and may have access to one manhole and then the 2nd is blocked by a car with no way to notify the owner to remove the vehicle.

    New signs have been placed tonight to be able to access the locations and begin repairing the damage. We know how important these services are and our team will work quickly to repair the fiber and restore service once they have access to the fiber in the ground.

    Please thank your readers for their patience and assistance to honor the no parking signs.”

    No specifics on location or numbers. If anyone in Alki sees a CL/Lumen crew, consider texting us so we can obtain photographic proof.

    • Chris August 30, 2022 (4:58 pm)

      Amazing!  Thank you for following up.  I actually just shared this with the support person I was dealing with that insisted there is nobody that can provide more detail.  Obviously that is not the case, their customer service is just that terrible. 

    • Chris August 30, 2022 (5:06 pm)

      Another thought here.  Why can’t SDOT tow the cars?  We are definitely 48hrs out from signs going up. This seems like an easy fix. 

    • Kelsey August 30, 2022 (7:50 pm)

      There was a Century Link large repair truck driving down Admiral at 61st at 4:45 this evening. Not sure where he ended up but I was very happy to see him heading our way! 

      • Sara August 31, 2022 (6:44 am)

        One pulled up in front of our house (61st and Admiral) around 5:30 last night. He stopped, looked at his phone, and drove away. Such a rollercoaster of emotions but maybe it means something is happening….it’s hard to remain optimistic. 

    • Joel August 30, 2022 (8:49 pm)

      I am suspicious of anything CenturyLink is saying at this point so I just walked a grid between our house and all other streets reported to be out here in the Alki area. I didn’t spot any parking signs. I would have more hope if I could have found some.I also called the Seattle IT department about this and was only able to leave a message, which I did with details of the outage. No response so far. Their website includes a Cable Bill of Rights to govern Comcast and CenturyLink. I would hope the department that has oversight of CenturyLink would be able to step in and advocate for consumers after this long of an outage when CenturyLink’s response has been either desceptively vague or grossly incompetent. It seems the department and Bill of Rights lack teeth or the will to enforce it. WSB is doing far more to resolve this than CenturyLink or their oversight agencies.

      • Chris August 31, 2022 (1:43 pm)

        It’s possible the fiber cut was nowhere near Alki, even though the outage was localized to the Alki area.  It could have been a single fiber optic cable in a bundle of cables running from say downtown to Alki that was damaged.  We just have no way of knowing one way or another.Either way, being suspicious of Centurylink is 110% the right state of mind to be in.

  • Ryan August 31, 2022 (9:41 am)

    Still haven’t seen centurylink activity in the alki area.  I was ableI buy a comcast compatible modem and activate internet in about 24 hours. 

    • Sam August 31, 2022 (10:40 am)

      How much did that run you? 

  • Christian Alki August 31, 2022 (12:08 pm)

    Still no internet here as well – 62nd/Alki. Day 9

  • Ryan August 31, 2022 (2:49 pm)

    My Centurylink service is back up and running ( Alki, Admiral & 62nd Ave SW). It started working a couple hours after I got Comcast working. Basically threaten to change isp, and it will turn on.  So now  do I keep comcast (some cheaper plan) as a back up or stop my Centurylink altogether? I really liked my CL service until it died for a week.

  • EricL August 31, 2022 (5:54 pm)

    Mine is back up (alki ave & 62nd ave sw) as well.  Not sure exactly when (I got backup comcast service up yesterday, so I hadn’t tried it yet today).  For now I’m planning to keep the comcast internet (lowest tier) as a backup.

  • EricL August 31, 2022 (7:19 pm)

    62nd and alki.  My service has been good for at least a couple hours now, and I just got the official message from centurylink that it is fixed as well.

  • Milo Fonbil September 1, 2022 (2:22 am)

    Second update on the nearby to the CenturyLink Lakeview Central Office location north of University District in Seattle vandalism and wire-theft affecting hundreds of customers for one full month time so far. Technicians have for the moment finally restored service – in the case of my land-line. While my own 633 prefix number has been restored for the moment, anyway, with the wiring facilities yet to be meaningfully secured from repeated vandalism and theft, my neighbor having a 525 prefix number still two days later has not had their land-line restored. Since both numerical prefixes are associated with the same CenturyLink Lakeview Central Office, evidently they are still schlepping and stumbling with the same facilities issue after more than one month of time. Really a messed up operation and phone company.

    • Milo Fonbil September 7, 2022 (9:09 pm)

      As of Tuesday, September 6, 2022, 525-prefix numbers that are handled via facilities associated with CenturyLink Lakeview Central Office located at 1208 NE 64TH ST are still out of commission, per CenturyLink, subjecting hundreds of business as well as residential service customers to what is now over 5 solid weeks of loss of service. Per CenturyLink, the promised steel enclosure that was stated to be installed for the purpose of securing the facilities from further vandalism have yet to be installed. CenturyLink is merely depending upon recently experienced grace of thieves who for the moment have not chosen to re-vandalize the facilities site. The Seattle Times reported on the similar January 2022 vandalism and Copper theft causing around one month or more of service outages shows little or no interest in reporting on this situation – perhaps in part because CenturyLink is so secretive to anybody and everybody about their failures to maintain land-line services that they refuse to inform reporters about what is going on and when it will be resolved. On the other hand, the typical Seattle Times article is generally so bereft of tangibly meaningful and/or reliable information that their readership would likely not even notice such a paucity of specific info.

      • Milo Fonbil September 13, 2022 (12:55 pm)

        CenturyLink restored my 633-prefix land-line and my close neighbor’s 545-prefix land-line associated with CenturyLink Lakeview Central Office located at 1208 NE 64TH ST in North Seattle over the first week of September. The status of a nearby 525-prefix business land-line that remained down on September 6 is unknown. It appears that CenturyLink is far more interested in spending money on routing new fiber-optic lines (in hopes of competing with Comcast cable) than in maintaining, repairing, and securing their Copper wire based land-lines. They are merely tenuously relying on the fact that the vandals/thieves have for whatever reasons recently chosen to not return to the original site – as opposed to acquiring and installing steel construction shields to guard against future damage/theft, as the company has formerly assured this customer would take place. Although CenturyLink understands and has acknowledged in writing that they know for certain that the technical problems affecting hundreds of customers exist at the damaged site nearby their Lakeview Central Office, they are – needlessly, and ironically very expensively for them as a company – insisting upon customers who have suffered over one month of loss of land-line services to make appointments for CenturyLink repair personnel to make individual visits in order to test the customers’ local wiring facilities that Century well knows are not at all the likely source of any of the problems. In my particular case – because they had admitted these facts to me previously – when my land-line was (remotely) checked and repaired around the beginning of September, a technician merely called in order to inform me that CenturyLink had finally (for the moment) repaired my land-line.

Sorry, comment time is over.