UPDATE: Xfinity/Comcast restored to most of Roaring Fork Valley

News News | Jun 5, 2023

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People packed into the Glenwood Springs Library on Monday morning after a Comcast/Xfinity outage caused many to be without WiFi or phone service.

The outage happened at 7:50 a.m. after an excavator working for the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority severed some fiber optic cables at 27th Street and Grand Avenue, said Leslie Oliver, senior director of external communications at Comcast.

RFTA has been working on those streets to create the 27th Street underpass project for pedestrian safety.

Garfield County Deputy District Attorney Tony Hershey said, the outage caused his morning court date to be delayed.

"We had some issues, but it was only like 30 minutes," he said.

The outage affected the Roaring Fork Valley from Glenwood Springs to Aspen. Other providers were not affected. The Glenwood Springs Library was a good location for people in town to head to because the library's provider is Centurylink, and the Glenwood Springs City Broadband was also an alternative for people seeking free internet connection during the outage.

"Our crews are currently on site, splicing the fiber, and the estimated time of return for all customers is about three to four hours," Oliver said in an email.

Cell phone carriers like T-Mobile were also affected, most likely from sharing the same towers as Comcast.

"Some cell towers are connected to the broader broadband network backbone by fiber or copper wiring that the cell phone carriers either own or lease from local providers," she said in an email. "The local broadband network provider that the cell phone companies lease facilities from are responsible for restoration of damaged infrastructure up to the point at which they hand off to the cell site owner/cellular company."

Those in town who have Comcast/Xfinity and are enrolled to receive outage notifications by text should have received notifications and can check their Xfinity app to get updates about the outage status and to sign up for text notifications.

Oliver confirmed at 3:50 p.m. that Xfinity/Comcast was restored to most of the Roaring Fork Valley.

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Jun 5, 2023

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