Plateau loses service for at least six hours

Plateau Telecommunications’ internet service went out for at least six hours Friday morning and afternoon and caused a ripple disruption to other internet providers in the region.

The outage occurred at a time when all schools in Quay County were using online instruction during the COVID-19 epidemic. The outage prompted Logan Municipal Schools to send a text message to students and parents, instructing them that assignments due Friday would be due Monday, instead.

Launa Waller, regulatory manager at Plateau, stated in a news release a server issue that impacted internet connectivity affected “the majority of our customers” and other internet providers. Plateau provides internet, voice and video services to 18 counties in New Mexico and four counties in the Texas Panhandle.

“Plateau was able to implement a configuration change, coupled with a hardware change, that mitigated the underlying problem,” Waller stated. “It is not acceptable to Plateau for its customers to lose service for this length of time. The cause is being investigated further and all measures will be taken to prevent a reoccurrence.”

Plateau also suffered an hourslong internet outage in March when a fiberoptic cable inadvertently was cut during utility work near its main equipment building in Tucumcari.