A rash of phone outages has made a lot of work for local law enforcement officers. Multiple times in the past couple of weeks, officers from both the Portsmouth Police Department and Scioto County Sheriff’s Office have performed welfare checks when worried family members were unable to contact loved ones.
Just after 9 am, the sister of an 85-year-old Portsmouth woman contacted the police and asked them to perform a welfare check. The sister lived out of town and hadn’t been able to contact her relative for more than a week.
Police spoke to the woman’s son and caretaker, who said their phone was out and the phone company was attempting to troubleshoot the problem.
A concerned resident of Bonser Run Road contacted SCDN to complain the neighbors have been without Frontier internet/phone service for almost 12 days. They said the company had no answers as to when service would be restored and that there were several elderly and disabled individuals with no way to call 9-1-1 should the need arrive, “Cell phone service for most doesn’t work in that area. It’s hit and miss. We’d like getting info out so maybe someone can help us.”
SCDN called Frontier to get a statement on the issue but was told that all supervisors were in a meeting with corporate and currently unavailable. We left a message but have yet to hear back.
However, the Bonser Run Road resident contacted us late in the day to say that service had been restored.
