This story has been updated with addition information.
Landline and cell phone service has been out or spotty in Juneau in recent days, for reasons not specified by companies, although the landline problems have been reportedly repaired as of Tuesday.
Larri Spengler, a Thane resident, said Wednesday her landline phone service with GCI Communications, an Alaska-based telecommunications company,was out for four days in a row and customer support representatives were unable to tell her why after she called the company from her cell phone.
“I’ve been calling every day, but every day they said ‘We were working on it. We can’t give you any estimate,’” she said. “They didn’t say to do anything to it.”
Spengler said her service was restored Tuesday afternoon.
A statement issued Tuesday by GCI noted “Technicians responded over the weekend to an incident impacting some GCI landline customers in the Juneau area. After an investigation, crews were able to resolve the issue and impacted services have been restored.”
Customers still experiencing problems with landline calls should first try to reboot their telephone modem, according to GCI’s statement. Further assistance is available by contacting the company’s technical support at (800) 800-4800 or rcs@gci.com.
Complaints about dropped calls and other problems with AT&T’s mobile phone service have also been expressed by Juneau residents in recent days — an issue that has surfaced previously. Juneau Tourism Manager Alex Pierce said Wednesday she has “probably heard complaints about it for the past year” downtown and is talking to service providers about possible remedies.
“We do know that cruise ships can cause internet slowdowns and that’s something we’re working on,” she said.
Pierce said she cannot pinpoint any specific infrastructure or cruise industry changes that might immediately explain the problems during the past year, but noted traffic resumed at full pace last year after two years of disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
An inquiry by the Empire to a local AT&T retailer was referred to the company’s national customer service center. An AT&T spokesperson stated in an email Wednesday “we are not seeing any widespread interruptions to wireless service in Juneau. However, our network can be impacted during periods of peak usage. We will continue to monitor our network’s performance and capacity needs and address them as needed.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
