CAPE CORAL, Fla. — As life in Southwest Florida slowly gets back to normal, thousands of Cape Coral residents could be stuck without internet for months.
Centurylink and Comcast customers in Cape Coral are still without internet and phone service three weeks after Hurricane Ian hit. A city meeting Wednesday night aimed to shed some light on the issue.
Like Mark Nigran, from St. James City, who has been without internet for over a month and has spent hours on the phone and at the Xfinity store, looking for answers. Nigran says half of his community has internet and the other half does not, "I manage and run a business remotely, so it's been difficult," after hours on both the phone and at the store he found out that he can't even submit a ticket for a technician to come out, "They said because it says on their computer that service would not be restored until November 23rd, they will not be even sending a tech out to us."
For Century link customers, that wait could be as long as the end of February, "We just wanted to make sure that people knew that in some cases, given the level of restoration some people might be out further into first quarter, " Guy Gunther, a spokesperson for the company added that they will be updating Cape Coral Mayor, John Gunter and the city manager daily.
“We’ve got about 6,600 customers that we can see from our networks that are still not authenticating to out network” said Centurylink spokesman Martin Valence at Wednesday nights special meeting.
With 250 crews in Cape Coral now, Valence said the lack of service could go into January.
Some Comcast customers are also waiting for service. While 95% have had their connection restored, around 1,500 customers in the Cape are still waiting.
Comcast Vice President of Communications Mindy Kramer said the latest estimated date for service restoration in Cape Coral is October 21. For areas like the barrier islands, it could last through December.
Both companies sighting the extensive damage of certain areas is also a factor in long repair times.
Centurylink is providing three free WiFi locations open to the public. You do not have to be a Centurylink customer to use them.
- 4001 Palm Tree Blvd., Cape Coral
- 4195 Kings Hwy., Port Charlotte
- 10546 Tipton Dr., Pine Island
