BOISE, Idaho — People in many parts of the Treasure Valley were without internet service into Tuesday afternoon because of an apparent outage affecting Sparklight.
The company said in Twitter posts Tuesday morning that it was "investigating reports of service outages" shared on the company's social media, and was also experiencing a "technical issue" with its phone and online customer account information.
The main Sparklight website also could not be reached as of 1:45 p.m. Tuesday, but was working again later in the afternoon.
People in Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Kuna, Middleton, Cascade and Idaho Falls replied to Sparklight social media posts. Some said they weren't having problems; others indicated they were without service, even after restarting their modems and routers. Users in other parts of the country also reported internet problems in their comments on Sparklight's Facebook post.
Shortly before 3 p.m. Tuesday, Sparklight tweeted that customers still without service or experiencing slow speeds should reboot their modems. Some replied, saying they had gotten their service back after doing so.
Service to call centers was restored at about 2:30 p.m., but because of high call volumes, many customers were on hold.
In response to questions from KTVB, a communications manager for Sparklight said late Tuesday afternoon that the company experienced a network disruption "for a portion of the day today, which impacted internet services to a subset of Sparklight customers as well as the ability for customers to reach our call centers. Services have now been restored. We regret any inconvenience our customers experienced during the service disruption. Should customers continue to experience any issues with their internet connection, they are encouraged to reboot their modem. Our Technical Care Team is available for further assistance at 877-692-2253."
Sparklight has not said what caused the network disruption.
User reports to the DownDetector website also indicated major outages in the Lewiston, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Wichita, Kansas, areas.
A previous outage, in November 2019, affected about 11,000 customers in the Treasure Valley when a fiber line in Boise was cut.
Watch more Local News:
See the latest news from around the Treasure Valley and the Gem State in our YouTube playlist:
