Customers of both Mediacom and T-Mobile experienced an extended outage throughout the day on Tuesday before most service was restored by the evening hours.
“Earlier today, some T-Mobile customers in parts of central Iowa experienced service disruptions due to a third-party transport issue caused by a fiber cut. Our engineers worked to restore service as quickly as possible, and service has been restored for the vast majority of affected customers while repair work continues,” a T-Mobile spokesperson said in an email to the T-R.” We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate our customers’ patience.”
At presstime, a request for Mediacom had not received a response. The outages had a major impact on day-to-day life within the community as several businesses reported being unable to open as a result, and the Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) reported being affected by the internet outage in a social media post.
Sheriff Joel Phillips told the T-R that public safety communications were not affected, but some calls to the non-emergency line were dropped, especially from T-Mobile customers. Additionally, Marshalltown Public Library Director Sarah Rosenblum said the library, which uses Heart of Iowa for Internet service, had “a number of confused people” inside the facility who were concerned about their loss of cell service.
City Public Works Director Heather Thomas also noted that the impact on her department was limited to “slight disruptions in cell phone communication” with vendors, contractors, and the public.
“However, much of the impact was reported as issues others had on their end. Some T-Mobile communication appears to have transferred to satellite text communication and went through,” she said.
Last August, T-Mobile finalized its acquisition of US Cellular for roughly $4.3 billion.