As Coloradans, we braced for and faced a historic storm over the weekend of March 12. And as Comcast employees, we worked round-the-clock to ensure our network remained resilient and reliable.
We’re always working to provide consistent connectivity for our customers. And when Mother Nature frowns on us with a storm, whether its snow, wind, or fire, our teams are prepared to deal with her impacts to restore service as quickly – and safely – as possible.
When a storm is in the forecast, we prepare our technicians’ vehicles with the right gear for the season, including portable generators, tire chains, cleats, flashlights, headlamps, and hand-warmers.
When we send a crew out to address an issue during a storm our top priority is the safety of our employees,” said Chris Weeks, VP of Technical Operations, Comcast Mountain West Region. “We hold regular field calls to understand the latest on-the-ground conditions, and we adjust schedules and priorities to ensure we can keep the most people consistently connected as safely as possible.”
We’ve built a powerful, forward-looking network with the simple purpose of keeping customers connected. During this storm, aside from those customers who unfortunately experienced home power outages, our network and services remained up and running.
We saw the most issues in Northern Colorado, where power outages impacted thousands of people.
During heavy storms like this, power outages caused by downed power lines, are the biggest factor in our network connectivity. A home Internet connection relies on electric power to the home, which is why we encourage our customers to prepare in advance in case their power goes out.
When the power goes out due to a storm, we have to wait on the local utility provider to restore power before we can restore our services,” says Bryan Thomas, VP of Engineering, Comcast Mountain West Region. “An important detail to note is that power needs to be restored to your home, as well as to the local Xfinity network serving your neighborhood in order for your services to be fully restored. We have a high degree of visibility into customer outages, and our teams work around the clock to restore service as quickly as we can to safely get your services back up and running.”
Working in close collaboration with our local utility partners, our technicians work through the very worst weather conditions to ensure your service is restored as quickly as possible, if impacted, so you can ride out the storm in the comfort and safety of your own home, with internet access for your entertainment and work.
Fun fact: We saw around a 20 percent increase in both upstream and downstream internet traffic on March 13 & 14, when compared to the previous weekend. Most people were enjoying their favorite shows or movies on Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Disney + etc. – but we also saw a large amount of game updates downloaded as well.
Keeping you and your family connected is a 24/7 job. With constant monitoring done by our teams we work to ensure that no matter the storm we may face, we’ll continue to deliver for you and keep you connected to what matters most – no matter how many more spring snows we get here in Colorado.
We’ve built a powerful network with a simple purpose: keeping our customers connected – always. Learn more here: https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-2020-network-performance-data