Daily internet outages throughout July disrupted local government operations and left Hurley residents without reliable phone or web access, town officials said.
“We’re losing Spectrum every single day,” said Supervisor Michael Boms. “All of July, we kept losing it—either part of the day or intermittently.”
Planning Board Clerk Maggie Colan said the outages made basic functions nearly impossible. “The bookkeeper has to go online, the building inspectors have to write permits, and they sit around doing nothing when the WiFi is out.”
Town Board member Debbie Dougherty said both she and her husband, who works for IBM, were unable to do their jobs.
“I couldn’t do town work from home or from the town offices because the internet was down in both places,” she said.
Dougherty also worried about her elderly mother. “She doesn’t have a phone when the internet’s out, which is really dangerous. She has a cell phone, but she’s not good with it.” Like many residents, her mother uses Spectrum’s bundle package, which links landline phone service to Wi-Fi—meaning when the internet goes down, the phone stops working too.
Town officials said Spectrum provided little information. “I feel like a ticket, more or less,” said Boms. He filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, after which a Spectrum technician arrived this week and replaced a damaged line.
Spectrum did not respond to request for comment.
Dougherty said the company claimed it had been deliberately taking the system offline to trace a noise issue in the line, possibly from a home on Russell Road.
While service has improved in recent days, officials say they’re not convinced the issue is resolved. “We’ve had stretches like this before,” said Dougherty. “I’m still holding my breath.”
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.