Internet calls go unanswered

ROANOKE RAPIDS — For thousands of Embarq customers, it was a rough start to the morning on Thursday— the Internet was down.

According to an Embarq customer service representative, a “major fiber optic” link wasn’t working. The problem was discovered around midnight and emergency crews went to work immediately.

Although the communications company was forecasting a complete fix might take until 8 a.m., Friday, many customers reported restored service shortly before 9 a.m. today.

When asked how many people might be impacted by the outage, the customer service representative explained more than 40 centers were affected and each could have up to 1,000 customers.

Internet service to the Daily Herald was down this morning but seemed to be normal by 9:15 a.m. If you sent an e-mail to the newspaper, we advise you to call and confirm receipt or resend the e-mail.