Please help us get the word out about this so we can apprehend whoever did this.
Everus provides high-speed internet access to rural residents and businesses. We have over 3,000 customers, meaning over 7,000 people depend on Everus for their electronic connection with family, friends and businesses.
Saturday morning at about 2:00AM, someone sabotaged a core (120 foot) tower which resulted in the tower collapsing and taking our network down with it. The tower was near the intersection of Wellington Road 7 and 12, near Parker in Mapleton Township.
It was a deliberate act, requiring planning and tools.
Everus network servers and other gear were at the equipment shelter attached to the tower, and when the tower came down, the shelter was also disabled.
All 3,000 Everus customer locations were disconnected from the network.
The field operations and support teams were on-site within an hour of us uncovering the problem.
We have re-routed the majority of affected customers to have their traffic take an alternate route and they are now back on-line, but since the alternative connections are now being overloaded, all customers will see slow speeds until we can restore the tower
Over 2,700 of Everus' 3,000 customers are now back on-line, albeit with slower speeds. Those customers directly connected to the collapsed tower will take longer to restore.
Depending on availability of replacement parts (the tower was a custom-engineered, high-strength tower with multiple antennae/dishes and radios on it), we are hoping to get the tower and radios back up and running within 2 weeks.
I want to emphasize that the tower collapsing was a deliberate act of malicious sabotage on a facility which would have otherwise enjoyed many more years of good service.
The police are involved in the investigation. We need to identify who was involved so we can track them down.
Anything anyone can do to help us identify the parties involved would be appreciated. Did you see or hear anything that night? Have you heard anyone talking about this? Whatever reasons the saboteurs think they had, they have caused incredible grief for our customers and created a substantial cost for Everus.
I want to credit the great team at Everus for their fast response and untiring efforts over the weekend to get service restored as quickly as they have for as many customers as they have.
How can you help? Let everyone know what has happened. That way we stand a better chance of:
- Having customers not blame this outage on Everus
- Catching whoever did this
You can also report any information to the OPP to help them in their efforts by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
Thank you,
Richard Cantin (richardc@everusinc.com)
President
Everus Communications Inc.