At 1:05am on Wednesday 3 April, thousands of Hobokenites, at least 600 of them members of the Stevens community, abruptly lost their Internet. This happened as students were finishing term papers, studying for midterms, and preparing to sign up for Fall 2019 classes. The outage lasted four hours.
Optimum, Stevens’ off-campus Internet Service Provider (ISP), had “planned network upgrades” through out the wee hours of the morning, according to Matthew, an Optimum Business support specialist. On the phone at 1:10am, he explained that cable and Internet service “for Optimum users in seven North Jersey towns” had been taken offline. He stressed that these interruptions were only temporary, and full service would be reinstated by 5:00am at the latest, with Hoboken expected to return online by 3:00am.
Several students were quick to express their dissatisfaction with the outage. “I also have no internet,” said Eric Londres at 1:33am. “how tf am I supposed to register for classes at 7?” At 1:37am, Audrey Dsouza commented, “Yikes its not that hard to send out an announcement.” Chaz Zwicker’s 1:28am message read, “This has happened multiple times throughout the year. They don’t seem to have a webpage with status/planned outages.”
A third-party service, aptly named “Is The Service Down,” confirmed Matthew’s explanation. As of 3:49am, 24 municipalities in the greater NYC metropolitan area reported outages, including Hoboken, Jersey City, Union City, Elizabeth, and Newark itself. Optimum provides information on service outages on their website, but this is only available after logging in to an Optimum or Optimum Business account. As Stevens does all business with its ISP on behalf of its students, it is difficult for individuals to proactively check for outages or verify one is occurring.
A second call to Optimum, several hours later at 4:20am, cleared up more questions. Jean, another Optimum Business support specialist, further explained that this outage, Outage 2217060, had been “announced at 1:00am on April 3rd” — five minutes before the outage effected Hoboken residents. He noted that Stevens “probably got some sort of notification [by e-mail],” though “in certain instances, [Optimum will] opt not to notify for security purposes … if phone or alarm systems will be down.” Based on Optimum’s terms of service, Jean said Optimum cuts service “any time they want to expand … [or] to fix the network.”
Internet connection in Hoboken was re-established between 3:15am and 3:45am. Select members of the Optimum network — only those who called in during the outage — were notified of the reinstatement by robocall at 9:00am.
Neither Stevens’s Division of Information Technologies nor Office of Residence Education was available for comment in the days following. Before a typical power, Internet, or phone outage, Stevens sends out alerts via e-mail and/or text message. No such notification was ever released. Similarly, the City of Hoboken has an alerts program which was not utilized.
What if this happens again? Is there anywhere in Hoboken that students can go to find steady, round-the-clock Internet? Luckily, yes, and it doesn’t involve racking up a mobile hot spot bill.
Due to the number of sensitive and indispensable machines on campus, Stevens serves as its own ISP. Unless Stevens loses power, all buildings on campus have 24/7 Internet services guaranteed for the Stevens community. From CPH to EAS, Howe Center to Davidson Lab, all on-campus buildings had reliable Internet during the outage, and will continue to for the foreseeable future.
Should Stevens students in SLH or other members of the Hoboken community lose Optimum Internet access in the future, an outage can be verified by calling (516) 364-8400 and providing the CMAC ID located on the white sticker under their modem.
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