Two-state Bresnan outage reveals why traditional news media is dying
When you are a computer guy, you know when the Internet is out somewhere. Calls come in all at once.
Last night, I was mini-golfing with my kids and my cell phone buzzed. It was a friend informing me that their Bresnan Internet and phone service wasn’t working. I had them do the usual modem and router reset. That didn’t fix the problem, so I blamed Bresnan and told them to wait it out. As I was hanging up, my call waiting went off – it was someone 20 miles away from the previous caller with exactly the same problem. I blamed Bresnan and answered the next call waiting call.
I walked the last few holes so that I could talk on my cell phone to comfort people during their time of loss.
As soon as the calls stopped coming in, I opened up my Twitter application on my Palm Pre. Remember, the Pre multi-tasks, so I also opened up the web and went to Bresnan’s homepage. There was nothing about the outage on the Bresnan site.
A Twitter search for Bresnan revealed the span of the problem immediately. Montana, parts of Utah and Colorado Bresnan customers were all down. It appears that everywhere Bresnan services was down.
Bresnan’s television service was working great, however, there was no banner running across the bottom of any of the channels notifying customers that Bresnan was having problems. Keep in mind that a big percentage of Bresnan customers subscribe through their “Triple Play” package which provides Internet, TV and Phone service. Last night, only their television service was working.
I tried to call all of the local TV stations (by now it was 10:30pm and the local news airing live). There was no answer on their emergency news tip lines. I called a few friends who worked for news stations, but none of the stations reported the problem while they were live on the air.
While I struggled to find details from Bresnan and TV news, I was notifying and helping hundreds of people cope with their outage via Twitter. It only took a few seconds on Twitter to realize that this was a big problem. But, Bresnan and most of the local news services don’t have Twitter accounts. I imagine they think that Twitter is just a fad where people text what they are eating for lunch.
A Google news search this morning reveals two news stories about the outage. Neither writer realized that the outage went beyond their local coverage.
This is why talkingDigital exists. We are not a news site. However, we track and comment on the technology news that affects the average human – geek or nongeek alike.
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Adam Cochran
Adam Cochran - computer guy, social media enthusiast, college instructor, former radio DJ, radio talkshow host, podcaster, photographer, writer, and capitalist.
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I wrote about this this morning too, the fact that Twitter and social networks have been more informative about the Bresnan outage than anywhere else. Even if it’s not a sad commentary about the state of traditional news media (which it is, to some extent) it’s an even sadder commentary on the state of corporate communications.
Companies need to realize that they need to be on top of crises like these on Twitter and everywhere else. Granted, in six months, no one will remember the Twitter hashtag #bresnanfail, but that hashtag is sure doing its damage now.
The biggest problem that a lot of these big companies have, is not keeping customers in the loop.
I called them at 8PM only to find a a “number not available, try again later” message. Nothing on the homepage. No communication.
I understand that at the time something occurs, it can be difficult, but fast forward to 6AM, and I still had no news, other than a news station that said they too couldn’t get in touch with Bresnan.
I have yet to see a formal announcement from Bresnan, but a single point of failure that can take out 3 states seems fairly odd, and a big risk for a company that is supporting business clients (like myself) for both phone and Internet.
Thanks for all the Twitter updates Adam!