— by Margie Doyle —
Aug. 20 at 6 a.m. — Orcas Island experienced a major outage on the county-wide communication network during the last 18 hours.
According to Gerry Lawlor of Rock Island Communications, the outage was due to a car hitting and knocking down a major utility pole in the Anacortes area. “This affects all major carriers (OPALCO CLINK, T-Mobile, ATT, Sprint) except Verizon, from what we can gather. Some in the county may be able to make in county calls but we are seeing some landline issues. DSL is down.”
After electric crews completed restoration work, fiber crew worked to restore internet connections during the evening of Aug. 19.
Internet connection was re-established by 6 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 20.
Thanks to Gerry Lawlor for ongoing announcements.
this has happened a number of times before. A single pole gets hit and we lose our mobile and dsl capabilities for an entire island. Why aren’t these poles protected? Or more to the point, why do they continue to remain unprotected?
The fragility of the phone, internet, cell phone network is quite stunning. Even more stunning is how so many things come to an utter halt when those networks are down; debit/credit card transactions, mapping, reservation systems, parents and kids keeping track of one another’s whereabouts, etc. This is a good reminder that in the event of a large earthquake we are going to be without those systems and very likely without electricity as well, for quite a while. I am now keenly aware of the importance of making fall-back plans for meeting people in the event of no cell service after driving around Eastsound looking for someone in that good old fashioned way!
I echo Ken’s comments…read last Wednesday’s Sounder article on the impending danger of a tsunami.
We have, especially here on Orcas two, hopefully complimentary views of sustaining our expected lifestyles: being “in the moment”, in direct connection with our surroundings, weather and other life forms; and superimposing the with-me-all-the-time cel phone, smart phone or i-pad (text message: i’ll meet u at 6). When our man-made connection gadgets fail, what will we need to rely on? Be ready.
I used to own a wireless internet business very similar to Rock Island and Orcas Online. We created a redundant network so that if one leg failed we could route via another. There really isn’t any reason why Opalco and the various providers cannot do the same. It would be fairly easy and relatively inexpensive ($30,000) to establish a wireless backup link using licensed radios to Bellingham or some such place. While not as fast as fiber it would be very capable of providing basic service when the primary fiber link fails.
OPALCO bought ROCK ISLAND. When I called Rock Island, at 1p.m., the day of the outage. Tom’s message was that our servers were fine, and mentioned Ceturylink as a possible cause. This message surprised me, I even called back to hear it again.
As a member of the Opalco coop and a customer of rock island, where do I stand now? I voted against Opalco getting into internet business, as a majority of members did.
Not only did OPALCO ignore the vote of the people, they proceeded. Then, they we bought rock island. what’s next?
Buy CenturyLink?
OPALCO. Slash your staff. NOT line persons. Your front office needs to have a heart.
Cut OUR loses as an ELECTRICAL COOP. Put the electric back in “OPALCO”.
Remember, it stands for ORCAS POWER AND LIGHT COOPERACTIVE, serving the San Juan’s
The members used to have a say. until the chamber of commerce took control.
I wish to go back to paying for my electric usage only, have been paying into PROJECTPAL since its inception, don’t know where that’s going.
From what I have experienced and been told
our coop is into saying “N0”, and fees ,fines and penalty’s.
Bottom line, OPALCO treats its owner owned members rather shoddily.
The single point of failure that took out communications was beyond Rock Island’s control, and all any of us could do was try to keep people informed. This time, at least, the break was above the water line, and the rapid response on the mainland got everyone back up during the night, with all service voice and data to the islands restored by 6:15 AM the next day. I’d be happy to talk with you about our member survey that supported the broadband initiative, as well as your concern about paying for electricity only. You are not paying for Rock Island beyond $3 per month for the next 18 months, and that covers interest on the Opalco loan and does not go to Rock Island. And Project PAL helped out more than 150 families last heating season, so thank you for donating to this helpful program.
Theresa Haynie for OPALCO
Oh, c’mon. It was hardly OPALCOs fault that someone in Anacortes ran unit a utility pole. Even an independent Rock Island would have lost connectivity — and it wouldn’t have been their fault either. The problem was appropriately addressed by Century Link — the owner of the pole and the provider of the fiber optic cable used to link our islands to the mainland.
Early in the outage, I called the Century Link service number, and was told that they knew about the problem, had crews out to repair the line, and gave a reasonable estimate of when we could expect service to be restored. They updated their information every 15 minutes, so anyone could be fully informed at any time.
It is unfortunate that there is no backup system here, but, as Steve points out, even a slower (and cheaper) alternative would cost around $30K. How ’bout if we all work together to come up with a one-time per member $7 surcharge to purchase the backup system? After all, we are all members of a cooperative — can’t we cooperate instead of castigate?
I have a question for OPALCO about this latest internet debacle. After hearing CenturyLinks recorded message that was supposedly updated every 15 minutes saying service would be restored by 10:00 that night I waited. After 10:00 they updated their message saying it might not be restored until 10:00 the following night. So I went looking for WiFi so I could at least check my emails for work and of course the first place I went was OPALCO. Was I able to use their WiFi? No. But I was able to use the libraries. Why was I not able to get on the OPALCOCares or OPALCOGuest network?
Hi Darlene, if you’d gone to Rock Island communications in Eastsound, you could’ve gotten online. Our Oplaco intranet and fiber between offices was still functioning, but some microwave tower failover dropped, effectively keeping the Opalco office offline for Internet during the CLINK outage.
Theresa Haynie for Opals
The key issue on this topic is not whether someone plowed into a telephone pole. It is the need for redundancy. I was at a party in the Doe Bay area during the “blackout” and had internet connections as usual because there is an independent wireless internet service in that area. There is also wireless service in the Eastsound village near the Brown Bear Bakery.
For a nominal investment (<$1000 each), the businesses in the vicinity of Ray's Pharmacy have independent wireless service. Is such a service the answer to the need for a County wide internet utility? NO, though it is an important element in a system that provides REDUNDANCY when the core service of the system fails.
It is interesting to remember that a significant reason for expansion of the internet service throughout the County was the need to have dependable connectivity for the emergency services, Fire and Medivac, in those more remote corners of our Islands. When the service was severed this week, the communications of the first-responders was no better than it was five years ago.
REDUNDANCY. It is why, not so many years ago, that we all used wood-burning stoves for heat when the electric lines were severed in winter storms. Today, many homes use solar power or even micro-hydro as a
redundant source of electric energy.
We are an island community, vulnerable because of the very geography
that makes the San Juan Islands such a special place to live. We all take our utility services for granted until, inevitably, we are cut of from the mainland, again !!
I agree with Barbara–we really need to figure out some redundancy. We had ANOTHER outage two days ago.
The County wants and needs low impact businesses in addition to tourism. Neither those businesses (professionals, consultants, writers, programmers, often working in a quite eco-friendly manner at home offices) nor our extensive tourist industry can function these days without connectivity. It was bad enough limping along with CenturyLink’s offering; we finally were able to upgrade via Orcas Online. But if the source is lost and there’s no back-up, we’re back in the 20th century.
I personally don’t understand the ins and outs of which line does what, but would love to have someone who does tell us how to invest in redundancy.
The most cost effective way of creating redundancy is to purchase or lease a site with a fiber connection at Bellingham or any other nearby community. Then place a microwave radio at that location. Place a matching microwave radio on one of the sites on Orcas Island where there is an existing connection. Line of sight is required. Depending on where the mainland connection is it may be necessary to relay the signal via a high point such as one of the hills in the area. Microwave radios can be very fast and very reliable. This is something that any one of the existing providers can easily integrate into their existing network. There costs are low enough that there should not be any need for a surcharge on the bill. This is something that Opalco should do as they provide the connections for the phones and emergency services. It is something that Orcas Online could easily do as they already have multiple links to other islands. Adding a redundant connection to the mainland is not technically difficult.
What can the average person do? Contact your provider and ask/demand that they set up a backup connection so that there isn’t a single point of failure.
Folks, Rock Island/OPALCO has a wireless backup that was fully functional the day of the outage. All new fiber customers who where installed this year continued throughout day without issue. We are in the middle of installing more wireless links to more diverse locations on the mainland to create separate redundancies in our redundant links. However, no amount of wireless connectivity will carry the total traffic of this county especially as needs and volumes grow, which they will.
In an event where all physical connectivity is lost and we have to default to a wireless only situation, traffic will have to be prioritized and some folks will be slowed or disconnected during such an event. The real issue here is physical separation throughout the entire network that goes to both Bellingham and Seattle. We have a lot of technical redundancy (switch or router fails you can fail over to another etc) however last weeks outage has highlighted a key challenge of Fidalgo Island and the fact that there are only three paths off it and only one is used to carry all providers infrastructure. The line that broke is not on a CLINK pole put a power pole owned by PSE that numerous telco carries lease space for their fiber. The incident also took down power lines above the fiber. Our job now is to demand that our carriers on Fidalgo deploy more fiber in separate locations. This conversation has begun but it is an uphill battle if PSE only provides one path over the Swinomish Channel and Deception Pass. While others love to toot their horns when they are up and others are down, rest assured that everyone will suffer from an outage at some point or another. What happens after the outage is what makes you a good provider…
Gerry, thank you for the speaking up and talking about the RI/O redundancies. Can you elaborate on what kind of wireless links you have off island? In other words, where do they go and what kind of bandwidth do these have?
It is my understanding that you can connect to other locations than Fidalgo and bypass the vulnerability there.
I think the policy of restricting bandwidth during an outage is reasonable as you really don’t have any choice. Hopefully you find a way so that you don’t have to disconnect anyone.
Fiber is great. But a submarine fiber cable is very expensive. I believe that you could use multiple radios connecting to multiple points and achieve bandwidth comparable to fiber at a fraction of the cost of submarine fiber.
I am glad to hear that you are able to provide a backup system to at least some of your customers. And I agree that the demand will continue to grow.
There are multiple people on island that have experience in creating networks. I suspect that if you found a way to involve those people that you would be able to deploy far faster than the current pace for perhaps less money. Seems like everyone would benefit from drawing on the expertise that is on island that isn’t being used. Just my opinion.
We have two paths from Mt Con to different locations in Bellingham with over 500Mbps in place going to a gig in the near term. We are also looking at more locations accessible from Mt Con to south of bellingham and from Lopez to various points on the mainland. Regarding the Fiber to the mainland and cost, remember our fiber is always in a power cable so the actual cost of the fiber as part of an electric cable lay is a fraction of the cost if your are laying fiber by itself… If you are going to be under the water there is no better place to have an under water fiber line than in a 50lbs per foot electric cable…
We are currently running 20Gbps to the mainland are are experimenting with dense wave so our capacity could reach as high as 600Gbps… what we are all doing when we need that much backhaul I am dying to see…. The simple matter is diversity throughout the network. All paths are required to manage any number of fail scenarios. We can clearly create this in the network we directly control, but it is harder when are are dealing with 3rd parties and how they manage their infrastructure. The national telecom network is full of single points of failure and dealing with multiple islands and water crossings while keep up with never ending demand makes this location all the more interesting.
We have 3 distinct paths out of the county with multiple redundancies within each path. Creating the sam level of diversity beyond will be an ongoing process.
Gerry – again, thank you for the information. The redundant connections to the mainland at various locations sounds good. I don’t think I could do any better.
I too look forward to seeing how the islands use the bandwidth.