What Causes Service Outages?

What’s the latest when it comes to outages and the United States?

14:01 04 May 2021

The Spectrum Outage has been buzzing around the place for the past few weeks. When it comes to service providers in the United States, there are very few that we would put in front of Spectrum to get a handle on an outage quicker or in a very efficient and timely manner. The best thing, if there is any, about being a Spectrum customer during an outage is the Spectrum customer service that you get 24/7 around the clock just by dialing their toll-free number.

 

An outage can be defined as the lack of service quality, connectivity, or even response from the service provider towards the customer. This means that an outage is whenever the connection drops or stops working for a long period in a large area or region. The main reason as to what causes an outage to stick around for a longer time than what it takes for the service provider to simply reboot your services from the back end to restart the services is that an outage is often due to a single or multiple breakage points in the connection wires.

 

There is a huge difference between knowing that there is an outage, knowing that the outage exists in a certain area or region, and finding the reason as to why there is an outage in the first place. The main issue that lies with finding the exact location of the breakage point is that connectivity wires cover a large area and when it comes to locating an exact location of the breakage point, it could take a lot of time. Especially if there are no sensors mounted upon the service provider’s connection wires.

 

Some of the Most Common Reason for Service Outages

 

As we have mentioned above, outages in your services could be a source of extreme frustration, especially if the outage that has occurred is not dealt with or fixed on a timely notice or as soon as possible. This frustration could amount to being a very unpleasant experience for the customer service departments and the customer service representatives that are on the front line dealing with angry and frustrated customers.

 

We already have talked about the things that you need to know and do when a service outage occurs, however, what else you need to know is about what are the most common reasons for outages to occur in the first place.

 

Vandals

 

Surprisingly this happens to be one of the most common reasons for an outage to occur. Vandals who were out looking for just a good night may cross a few lines, quite figuratively, and cut some wires along their way. This action may cause an outage that may last for a couple of days, drastically affecting the services of many individuals.

 

Operation Error

 

This is one of the issues that arise due to the service provider, which in this case is an internet service provider. Operational errors may occur when an internet service provider may mix-up the IP addresses of multiple individuals or households or when an internet service provider may end up doing faulty wiring during the installation set-up of a region or when a connector or breaker of an area may collapse as it was of faulty quality.

 

Natural Disasters

 

Certain things just happen that we as individuals have next to zero control over. Natural disasters are just that certain thing. Everything from strong winds, hurricanes, and snowstorms to thunderstorms and bush fires may cause a service outage which would only be fixed after the natural disaster would end.

 

Network Congestion

 

As is the case with websites and social media platforms. When there are too many individuals or households put on the same connection via the service provider, chances are that when the majority of the connections are active, due to network congestion none or all of the users would not be able to use the service properly as they want to or rather, in most cases, the customer would not be able to use the service at all.

 

No Response from the Service Provider

 

Due to breakage in connections, there are good chances that the service provider would lose its ability to inform their customers regarding the outages on time.

 

Wrapping Things Up

 

Service outages are something that all customers or consumers should be expecting to occur and be prepared with alternative sources to keep the wheels turning. This means that you should be aware are ready for, let’s assume, a cable TV outage with a subscription to an online streaming service like Amazon Prime or Netflix. Moreover, if the outage relates to an internet connection, then you should be prepared to get access to alternate internet options like mobile data and what not so that you wouldn’t have to face the harsh world without the facility of the internet.