Complaints pile up over CenturyLink outage

BILLINGS (AP) — Montana officials say there’s not much they can do about a recent outage by national telecommunications company CenturyLink.

The Billings Gazette reports the outage affected phone and internet service across the state beginning Dec. 27 and wasn’t fully resolved until two days later.

The Montana Public Service Commission says it can do little for most of the unhappy residents because the complaints center on internet outages, something the commission does not regulate.

Commission communications director Bowen Greenwood says there has been a steady stream of complaints about the outage, but of the nine official complaints logged, only one had to do with telephone service — a utility the public service commission does regulate.

CenturyLink told The Gazette the cause of the problem was a “faulty network management card” that was part of software from a third-party vendor.