Round the Clock Research Identifies Obscure Equipment Failure for Elevate Internet

Sporadic and intermittent internet outages impacted Elevate consumers January 17

Thursday, January 18, 2024 – Yesterday, Elevate Internet consumers experienced inconsistent service interruptions throughout the day. Elevate engineers first noticed degraded internet performance in the early hours of Wednesday morning after errors surfaced on a core router during a standard service upgrade. Engineers were quick to act, rolling back the changes, but failures persisted.

"Elevate's regular upgrade and maintenance work is conducted in the middle of the night to alleviate the impact on our consumers. As we monitored our network, we noticed some anomalies at around 3:30 in the morning. I credit our network engineer team for their quick thinking, which kept service interruptions from reaching the critical outage stage. They worked through the day and night and fully restored all Elevate services at approximately 4:30 a.m. this morning," explained Kent Blackwell, Elevate's Chief Technology Officer.

The culprit of Elevate's service issues was challenging to identify as consumers across their network reported sporadic problems reaching websites, streaming services, and phone issues.

"The inconsistency and randomness of the interruptions made it difficult to pinpoint the source of the issue. Our network team did an amazing job of troubleshooting, ultimately identifying a critical piece of failed equipment in a core router. I must also give credit to the Montrose Daily Press. They acted as our troubleshooting partner as we replaced equipment, helping us identify additional malfunctioning router cards," said Blackwell.

Core router cards act as the major switchboards for Elevate's fiber network, routing internet service to and from its consumers. Elevate's offices were not immune to the service interruptions. Consumers could not reach the ISP or its parent company, DMEA, by phone for much of the afternoon. As of Thursday morning, January 18, 2024, Elevate had returned to business as usual, with its internet, TV, and phone services fully stabilized.

"We recognize that both our internet and electric consumers' ability to pay their bills was impacted yesterday afternoon. As a result, we have suspended our disconnection processes this week. Our services are fully restored, and we're here to help. Disconnect processes will resume next week," stressed Blackwell.

Extended service interruptions are uncommon for Elevate Internet. The locally-owned and operated fiber broadband provider averages an uptime of 99.999% on its core network. However, according to Blackwell, events like yesterday's are extremely rare and further emphasize the need for internet providers to focus on network diversity and consumer experience.

"Our fiber network is built to allow us to re-route internet service and shift our consumers to different routers. Yesterday highlighted how important that extra step is for reliability, and although our consumers experienced interruptions, because of our redundant setup, we were able to prevent the complete loss of services," said Blackwell.

"I want to stress that yesterday’s service disruptions were no ordinary circumstances but rather a perfect storm of challenges. Despite the extraordinary nature of these events, we recognize the frustrations of our subscribers. In a commitment to deliver only the best, Elevate is proactively issuing credits for the inconvenience."

Elevate residential consumers can expect to see a $5 credit on the bill they will receive in February, with business consumers receiving a $10 credit.

"All I can say is thank you. Our consumers showed us an incredible amount of support yesterday, and we appreciate your patience," said Blackwell.