Optimum Outage Paralyzes Sections of Crown Heights

CROWN HEIGHTS – Optimum confirmed a “third party” construction crew caused the service outage on Wednesday that electronically shut down parts of Crown Heights.

Hundreds of residents and small businesses in the neighborhood were affected, especially along the Kingston Avenue retail corridor. Businesses could not take credit card payments from their patrons.

Yaacov Behrman, who runs Operation Survival, a drug prevention program, said his service went dark as early as 10:00 am. Service was still down when he left his office at 5:30 pm. The Crown Heights resident said he received an email at 9:30 pm advising him the service had resumed.

“It pretty much paralyzed the workday,” he said.

The outage also came during when the Crown Heights area is hosting the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Shluchos (Women Emissaries). The event brings hundreds of visitors to the area. Staffers had struggled to electronically register attendees because of the lack of internet service.

A few people took to social to complain about the issue. One subscriber said she learned of the outage first by stopping in her local pharmacy around 3:00 p.m.

For some subscribers who have Optimum as their internet provider and phone service, the outage was particularly daunting.

Lindsey Angioletti from Optimum said restoration throughout the area varied but started in the early afternoon with all customers restored by the evening.

“Yesterday, some customers in Crown Heights experienced a disruption of service due to a third-party construction crew cutting through a fiber line,” said

Angioletti in a statement. “Our technical crews worked as quickly as possible to repair the extensive damage, and services were restored yesterday.

The spokesperson would not comment as the geographical scope of the outage or the third party construction crew who caused the damage.