UPDATE (11:30 a.m. on 12.28.18)
MISSOULA – CenturyLink reports that a “major path issue” is what has caused outages across Montana and several other states on Thursday.
The company posted on their Twitter page early Friday that they expect to restore service sometime Friday morning.
The outages impacted banks, stores, local city government offices, some police stations in Montana and satellite TV operators DirecTV and Dish Network.
CenturyLink said that they were seeing “positive progress” in resolving the problem as of 2:45 a.m. on Friday.
CenturyLink said their engineers and technicians identified a network element that was impacting customer service and apologized for the inconvenience to its customers.
Specifics on what actually happened was not released.
The company further stated that as of 8:45 a.m. they were “seeing good progress” but that “restoration work is not complete.”
We are seeing good progress, but our service restoration work is not complete. Our teams are continuing their efforts to resolve these issues and we will continue to provide updates throughout the day.
— CenturyLink (@CenturyLink) December 28, 2018
Some Verizon customers have also been suffering from internet outages because they use CenturyLink to distribute their data.
Missoula Federal Credit Union reported on Twitter that service had mostly been restored and they were working to get their ATMs back up and running.
Services are mostly restored at MFCU! We are still working on a few ATM's, but will have them online soon. Thank you all for your patience. We know the holidays are stressful, so we apologize for the extra hassle this has caused. Thank you for belonging to MFCU!
— Missoula Federal Credit Union (@MFCU) December 28, 2018
CenturyLink noted late on Friday morning that some 911 service in the US was still being affected by the internet outage.
We are aware of some 911 service disruptions affecting various areas through the United States. In case of an emergency, customers should use their wireless phones to call 911 or drive to the nearest fire station or emergency facility. Technicians are working to restore services.
— CenturyLink (@CenturyLink) December 28, 2018
