Innovative customers in the Virgin Islands experienced an outage on Friday due to damages to the company’s underground telecommunications infrastructure, the company reported in a Sunday news release.
“For the second time in three weeks, contractors working on the Virgin Islands Next Generation Network fiber construction on St. Thomas damaged Innovative’s fiber cables. As a result of this damage to Innovative’s facilities, customers with voice, data and wireless services were affected,” said Terry Falls, Innovative’s senior vice president of network operations.
Customers in the Tutu, Nazareth and Red Hook areas of St. Thomas were without voice, data or wireless services on Friday morning. Most service to residential and commercial customers in St. Thomas was restored by 2:50 p.m. that day. On St. Croix, Internet customers, customers calling 800 numbers, and business customers with credit card machines were without service until 1:30 p.m.
Innovative’s technical crews were immediately dispatched and services were rerouted to alternate fiber cables.
“Innovative is working closely with the management of the viNGN to ensure that incidents like this one, that adversely affect the company’s infrastructure and service to our customers, are avoided at all cost,” Falls said.
Innovative customers who need cable TV or phone repairs and are calling from landlines can dial 912, according to the company’s news release. Customers using wireless phones can reach the repair center at 1-340-778-1742. The company asked that those calling for service be ready with the telephone number, statement number, address, description of problem and brief directions.
Innovative PowerNet customers needing assistance can call 1-340-714-3700, the company said. Innovative customers can also report a service problem online by logging on to www.innovativevi.net, clicking on the “Contact Us” button at the top right of the home page and selecting “Repair Center” as the subject in the “Submit An Inquiry” section. Customers can also report their problem by email sent to [email protected].
Innovative apologized for any inconvenience this incident caused its customers.