Town interrupted - ongoing Internet outage affects multiple departments

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MADAWASKA – Sub-zero temperatures have caused quite a problem for Madawaska's municipal departments and superintendents, sending them back to the days when the fastest technology was the fax machine.

The past week of bitter cold has caused an Internet service interruption for these departments and town employees have been unable to access the World Wide Web for over a week.

Pioneer Broadband is the Internet provider for the town office, superintendent's office, police department, ambulance department and other municipal departments, according to town manager Christina Therrien.

Pioneer Broadband employee Dean said in response to Fiddlehead Focus's request for a service update, “They're working the best they can to fix it. I have not been informed of any time-frame, but I know they're hoping for this week.”

According to police dispatch, service has been down at the station since Friday, Jan. 18. Sergeant Ross Dubois said that everything is tied to the Internet. The officers are unable to access email and it is difficult to communicate with other stations, said Dubois.

Police Chief Carroll Theriault said, “It's affected us.”

Lynn Beaulieu at the superintendent's office said they have also had difficulty conducting business as usual with the outage and that this was the second time they had experienced problems in recent weeks. They also suffered an outage during the last bitter cold spell, according to Beaulieu.

“Pioneer doesn't really have a whole lot of solutions. The provider's the problem,” said Beaulieu. “We'll come to some results through other means, I guess.”

Such is the case, as town manager Therrien has sought multiple quotes and has decided to switch to another Internet provider.

“I think there are probably many other cold places that still have Internet,” said Therrien.

Pioneer Broadband's issue is primarily with their technology, according to both one of their employees and the town manager. It is not able to withstand subzero temperatures.

“It's not acceptable,” said Therrien. “You can't do anything.”

Therrien said the ambulance department has struggled recently because they have been unable to submit incident reports that become part of a patient's medical report. To overcome this hurdle, they have to find a computer with Internet access that has the required software installed for submitting such a report.

“It is definitely a problem,” said Therrien.

According to Therrien, Superintendent Wood has decided to batch the superintendent's office service with the Internet service provided to the department’s two schools.