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Many customers on third day without AT&T's U-Verse serviceJan 23, 2013 (The Miami Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Many AT&T U-Verse customers still did not have Internet, TV or phone service Wednesday, the result of a mass outage that began Monday and has affected users in Florida and about 13 other states across the Southeast and Southwest. "I'm living in a prehistoric age with AT&T," vented Sabrina from Miami on her Twitter account. Many customers have been frustrated with the lack of communication from the communications giant. Over the past three days, the company has provided little information about the cause of the outage or the timeframe for when customers might see their service restored. Tuesday, the company provided an email to The Miami Herald that stated the problem was with a server that supports U-Verse, which uses fiber-optic technology. It also stated that the company's technicians and engineers were working to restore the service, and included an apology to its customers for the inconvenience. The outage has caused more than an inconvenience for many customers who use the fast Internet service for their businesses. On Twitter, AT&T U-Verse posted that some customers might be able to restore service by restarting their systems. "More to come ASAP." That post was about 8 p.m. Tuesday. There had been no update as of early Wednesday afternoon. "Not a happy camper," Michael Johnson of Little Rock, Ark., posted on AT&T's U-Verse Facebook page. The page has yet to post any information about the outage. On an AT&T support forum, one post said the outage was caused by authentication servers that went down in Texas. It states if the residential gateways can't authenticate, they can't get IP addresses. Other angry social media posts have suggested the problem may be due to hacking of the system. A Twitter post from Carrie Carlton Schumacher of Boynton Beach said it's no use calling customer service because a recording says that agents will have no information about the outage. By 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, AT&T issued a statement that said the outage was at that point affecting "less than 1 percent of our U-verse subscribers." The statement continued: "But that is too many and we are working hard to fix this. We are making progress in resolving the issue which is related to a server complex, and are working to determine when service will be completely restored. " Meanwhile, AT&T's U-Verse refer-a-friend sweepstakes continues. ___ (c)2013 The Miami Herald Visit The Miami Herald at www.miamiherald.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |