Inland Cellular hopes to have all services back online by Monday.
A power surge late last week damaged a critical switch affecting phone calls and data for some 36,000 customers in north central Idaho and eastern Washington. The company has been scrambling ever since and earlier this week was able to bring services back online to customers in more populated areas through a roaming agreement approved by the FCC at Inland Cellular’s expense.
However, rural customers have been unable to utilize services while new equipment is being shipped and installed.
If all goes well, the new switch will be activated Sunday evening, when customer activity is at one of its lowest periods in the week and all services are expected to return for all customers.
Company officials say customers who were included in the temporary fix will experience outages ranging from about one to five hours as they are reconnected to the new equipment before everything is fully restored. (Lewiston Tribune)
