Internet Service Update!
Over the past couple of weeks, Management has received an extra number of calls regarding the internet service and Fibersphere. Management has reached out to Fibersphere to get an update on the ongoing issues regarding the speeds, the IP address change and incorrect geographic information. The following is an explanation Management received from Fibersphere that should help clarify some of these issues:
On February 26th, an internet service provider maliciously attacked Fibersphere’s California network by providing false information to one of the main US companies that maintains IP ownership records, with the clear intent of completely taking down our service. The impact of this activity threatened to block the Fibersphere IP addresses for all residents of Amerige Heights. We immediately began legal proceedings to attempt to halt this action, and were forced to purchase new IP addresses on the open market that we could deploy quickly to make sure your internet service continued to function. The temporary restraining order we filed on the 27th was unsuccessful, and on March 2nd we issued the new IP addresses to Amerige Heights residents to ensure that the service would not be interrupted. Unfortunately, as we rolled out the new IP addresses to another of our neighborhoods in Northern California, their main head-end equipment became overwhelmed and experienced a catastrophic failure. This led to Fibersphere having to deploy a large team to travel to Sacramento to replace the head-end equipment and swap out modems in nearly 1,000 homes over the course of 5 days. The resulting influx of calls and emails from customers impacted by the outage totally swamped our tech support line, leading to extremely long hold times, disconnections, and the inability to respond to customer issues in a timely fashion. We are returning to normal call volumes, and you can anticipate better service as we repair the damage done by this massive system failure
Over the last week, we also began receiving feedback from customers that web traffic was reflecting incorrect geographic information, leading to issues with streaming providers and other secure websites. Though we followed the proper procedures to update the main geo-location database services when we purchased the IP addresses, some websites and streaming providers do not update their own geo-location databases frequently, and are still reflecting inaccurate information. Fibersphere staff has been working with these providers to attempt to get them to update their records, but it has proven to be difficult to have that work completed as quickly as we would like. This issue will resolve itself soon, and we are in fact seeing daily improvements as more and more websites and providers perform their database updates.
We understand the frustration and headaches this has caused for you and your neighbors. Our goal is to deliver internet service that allows you to access all the content you want, and the unusual circumstances under which we had to issue the new IP’s has prevented some of you from being able to do that. We are working diligently on our end to get your service back to normal, so we can re-focus on rolling out new equipment and speed upgrades to your community. We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding as we get closer to a resolution. For any internet service issues, please contact Fibersphere at (714) 923-0035 or via online form at Fibersphere.com.