Submitted by Roy Novosel for Comcast
When will the power come back on? Of course. The same question applies to internet outages: When will my Internet be back up?
Power outages in the Skagit Valley are often related to severe weather conditions. We experience a variety of weather-related events in the Pacific Northwest, including storms, heavy rain, strong winds, and winter weather, which can lead to power outages by damaging power lines, transformers, and other electrical infrastructure. With storm season in the Pacific Northwest climaxing from mid-November to mid-January, your Xfinity services in Skagit County could be impacted soon.
During severe weather, the two most significant impacts are commercial power outages and damage to our network. Our network maintenance technicians work around the clock and use our resources to restore services as quickly and safely as possible. We also work in advance to prepare for these significant weather events by calling in more work crews, bringing in generators, and taking additional steps to ensure our systems, networks, and operations centers are resilient. Additionally, we partner with local power crews in outages and severe weather.
Emergency management procedures dictate that electricity must be restored first, and Comcast must receive clearance that it is safe for our crews to begin restoration work. However, for our customers who want to remain seamlessly connected when the power goes out, Comcast now offers a backup connectivity solution. We recently became the first internet service provider to provide a product designed to maintain connectivity when a storm hits, trees are down, or a customer experiences a local outage with the launch of Storm-Ready WiFi.
Think of Storm-Ready WiFi. as a backup generator for your Xfinity internet. When the power goes out, your network is automatically transitioned to cellular backup so you can continue using the Internet. Storm-Ready WiFi device is equipped with cellular backup and a four-hour rechargeable battery, more than enough power to keep customers up and running for the average power outage in the U.S. of two hours. Storm-Ready WiFi gives customers peace of mind that they can maintain connectivity at home, as it provides a seamless connection with auto-failover. For more on how Storm-Ready WiFi works, click here.
Storm-Ready WiFi also doubles as a WiFi extender to deliver a strong WiFi signal to those hard-to-reach corners of the home. The device works with Xfinity gateways to create a wall-to-wall mesh network that seamlessly extends coverage throughout customers’ homes. Storm-Ready WiFi is also WiFi 6 capable, elevating the WiFi experience in the home with faster speeds, lower latency, and increased bandwidth to power more devices in the ever-increasing connected homes of today.
Xfinity’s Storm-Ready WiFi is available now for $7 a month for 36 months and may be purchased at your local Xfinity Store and online at www.xfinity.com.
More Washington residents rely on Comcast for their internet service than any other provider, and we know that being connected to news and loved ones during a local crisis, like a weather event, has never been more critical. Storm-Ready WiFi is one of the many ways consumers can stay connected when the power goes out.
Roy Novosel serves as Vice President, of Engineering for Comcast and a member of the company’s Pacific Northwest Region senior leadership team. He is a technical operations, construction, and network engineering professional with 20 years of experience at Comcast. He is also an active member in the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, serving as the board president of the Sam Houston Chapter before relocating to Washington state.
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