Montana Sky suffers as part of massive internet outage

An internet outage that affected Montana Sky Networks customers Wednesday evening and Thursday morning was fixed by early Thursday afternoon.

Extensive damage to a main-line fiber-optic cable in St. Paul, Minnesota, Wednesday evening was responsible for the outage.

Montana Sky apologized early for the outage on its Facebook page, saying the “outage is beyond our control.”

According to Montana Sky’s upstream provider, the large cable running along a railroad track was extensively damaged, essentially stopping all internet traffic for potentially hundreds of thousands of customers for many communication providers across the region.

The damaged cable was located near a “hobo camp” in St. Paul, which prompted railroad and law enforcement personnel to deny access and protection to the fiber repair crew until daylight because of potential danger from transients, Montana Sky’s Facebook post noted.

After repairs were made, Montana Sky posted it was the longest outage in the company’s 25 years.