Cellphone service provider Inland Cellular hopes to have a temporary quick fix to a widespread outage that started Saturday by having partner carriers offer free voice and text roaming, as some services returned Tuesday night.
Some 36,000 Inland Cellular customers had been unable to call or text since a large-scale power failure on Saturday bypassed redundancy systems and knocked out a key piece of infrastructure. Data services were restored Saturday, and crews are still working on the outage. They had initiated a fix for voice network roaming and customers may need to power cycle their device for the changes to take effect.
While customers will be able to place outbound voice calls, inbound calls were still not functioning as of Tuesday. Federal Communications Commission approval is required for the temporary fix for inbound calling to take place, and approval was expected by Wednesday.
Equipment for the fix has to be flown in, and smoke from area fires has made transporting the equipment difficult. It was expected that voice and text services would be restored to about 75 percent of customers, though outlying communities such as Kendrick, Elk River, Whitebird and Pierce will not be able take advantage of the roaming services since the locations are too remote.
It’s not yet evident when the equipment will be repaired and replaced, but once the essential pieces are flown and in and hooked up, possibly in the next day or so, it could take an additional three days before service is fully restored. (Lewiston Tribune)
