WPCNR MEDIA MAYHEM. By John F. Bailey. August 7, 2020:
ALTICE CABLEVISION restored internet, phone and cable programming by Saturday morning to the North Street corridor after marathon repair to a Optimum trunk line on Bryant Avenue yesterday after four days of the neighborhood having no phone, internet, or cable programming from the company, due to a tree falling during Tropical Storm Isaias Tuesday.
Bryant Avenue was the Optimum repair epicenter (between Mamaroneck Avenue and North Street), a utility-vulnerable area with a history of being taken out by trees falling on key wiring during every “bad storm” as utility companies call them.
Optimum repair crews and trucks an tree clearing experts were hard pressed to repair the latest “tree takeout” outages by tropical storm Isaias media and communication services lasting approximately 48 hours , affecting both sides of North Street from I 287 to the southern White Plains border with Harrison, and extending across into Gedney Farms, according to persons WPCNR has talked to.
The option for residents to communicate with city police and officials and relatives was cellphone, if you had one.
Oddly, electricity was not cut off to some residents along North Street by the Bryant Avenue damage. Sources say the Optimum “Out” extended into Gedney Farms and the Highlands.
Reference to the “media outage” was not mentioned by the City of White Plains in its phone report Wednesday evening. City officials did not respond to WPCNR cellphone calls inquiring about what areas of of the city were affected by the media “Optimum Out,” and what the cause of the blackout was. (Altice Cablevision Optimum is a City of White Plains cable franchise.Fios is also a franchisee, but Optimum has the largest number of subscribers, approximately 14,000. Fios has approximately 6,000.)
WPCNR calls to the Communications Department of Westchester County, asking where in the county Optimum was out of service and the cause of the outage were not responded to. Perhaps they will today after four days. The problem was, if you could not see tv, you could not see any news or news conferences, the county televised, on any channel.
Residents calling Optimum service call numbers were met with recorded prompts and waits for representatives that did not end (blamed on “high volume of calls”), WPCNR spent 45 minutes (twice) waiting for a customer representative. One recorded update by Optimum was heard Wednesday evening by WPCNR, but gave no details on when Optimum service might be restored.
Newspapers and media appeared to ignore reporting the widespread Optimum outage which covered New Jersey, NY, Connecticut.
Optimum blamed the service outage restoration delay on streets needing to be cleared in their lone recorded taped direct reference.
