South Floridians without internet and cellular service can’t get answers

How many South Floridians are still without internet and cellular service? No one is saying.

Internet and cellular service providers repeatedly have refused to provide specific information about the extent of outages in South Florida. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald has received hundreds of reports from customers without internet service who say that are unable to get clear information from their providers. As of Monday, the Federal Communications Commission stopped sending daily reports of statewide outages.

As of Monday, the last day the FCC reported on the outages, there were 14,730 customers throughout Florida without cell service, including 1,434 in Miami-Dade and 924 in Broward. The FCC did not break out the information by provider.

For cable and internet services, the FCC reported on Monday that 893,409 customers throughout the state had outages; the FCC’s report did not break out the numbers by county.

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Dan Saltman, who works from a home office on his startup thehunt.com, said he has had power in the mid-beach section of Miami Beach since Monday but still has no internet service from his provider, Atlantic Broadband. Until he gets internet back – which may be next month, he said he was told – he has made do with 2G-speed cell service and available public wifi.

Hundreds more consumers have voiced similar complaints about Comcast/Xfinity and AT&T/U-verse.

Trying to get answers has been a challenge, and Saltman said the company wanted to list his reported outage as unrelated to Hurricane Irma, which he doesn’t believe is true. “I think that there are a lot more people with outages because they are not classifying them as outages,” he said.

Atlantic Broadband’s response, via email from Atlantic Broadband CEO Rich Shea: “There are still areas that we are repairing and we continue to have our additional technicians and contractors on site to repair, but are happy to report that there are no widespread outages at this time. If any customers are experiencing a service issue and they have power at their home, they should contact Atlantic Broadband for additional troubleshooting and if needed we will send one of our technicians out to the home to resolve the issue.”

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This story was originally published September 19, 2017 at 6:10 PM with the headline "South Floridians without internet and cellular service can’t get answers."