AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Power is back on for the vast majority of people in Augusta, but restoration of cable and internet service is lagging.

Students and teachers at five Richmond County elementary schools will return to classrooms Wednesday without working internet.

40 percent of WOW customers are still offline, even though the network is now 100 percent operational.

However, the problem is now local. The hurricane destroyed much of the network infrastructure and reconstruction is a lengthy process.

A line of torn fiber optic cables is longer than the line of traffic on Wheeler Road.

Shayne Johnson and his team at Alpha Fiber Communications are rebuilding the network that brings Internet to WOW customers.

“The problem is that the package has a big backbone that goes from a node to the homes, and every time you break it, it basically breaks the entire system,” Johnson said. “So there is no feed that goes from the house to the street because there is no feed at the end of the street.”

Although WOW’s system is back up and running, without connection to nodes there is no connection to the Internet.

Liz: “Where’s the hardest hit you’ve seen so far?”

Tom Hayes, foreman at Alpha Fiber Communications: “Right here.”

“The first thing you have to do is come here and set up all the security checkpoints, and then it’s extremely difficult to get control of the traffic,” Hayes said. “Then we start installing our new wires and saving as many as possible. As you can see, it’s a mess out here and we deal with it on almost every road we travel.”

Hayes says his crew will have fiber internet back on that section of Wheeler Road by Wednesday morning

Liz: “How long do you think you’re going to stay here?”

Johnson: “A few months.”

One of the first of many sections still to come.

“Most of the system, Comcast and WOW, most of it needs to be rebuilt,” Johnson said.

WOW does not have a date when they expect the internet to be restored.

Comcast pushed back the date they gave us twice.

But the guys on the ground rebuilding the network themselves expect to be working in Augusta for the next two months.

Comcast said Monday that it has nearly 300 teams working around the clock, seven days a week to repair damage to its network. Like the utilities, Comcast has brought in teams from other states to help.

The company says service has been restored to 77% of Comcast Business and Xfinity customers across CRSA.

The company expects to restore network and service to 90% of customers in Augusta, Martinez and Aiken by October 24th.

Restoration is expected by October 17 in Appling, Harlem, Louisville, Thomson, Waynesboro and the Windsor Spring area south of Augusta.

PHOTO GALLERY | COMCAST IS WORKING TO RESTORE THE SERVICE:

This depends on several factors, such as:

• Remaining restoration of commercial power to the grid.
• The ability of crews to access the locations.
• Whether debris is hindering construction and connection work.

The company is asking residents to help.

Crews must return to areas that were previously restored due to accidental fiber cuts on newly laid lines. When cleaning up debris, avoid any plumbing as you may incapacitate yourself or others.

Comcast said it also opened 11,715 public Xfinity hotspots in the region. Anyone, whether a customer or not, can access these hotspots. To learn how to connect, please visit this page. Only powered hotspots are active.

To find the hotspots and learn how to connect, visit https://south.comcast.com/2024/09/27/comcast-opens-xfinity-wifi-hotspots-for-helene.

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