Thousands of Spectrum customers across the Long Beach Peninsula spent nearly two full days without internet or phone service after an outage knocked out connections early on Oct. 25 and didn't let up until late the following night. The disruption stretched for roughly 40 hours, snarling everything from remote work to weekend football plans to the card readers at local businesses.
The outage began around 7 to 8 a.m. that Sunday and dragged on until internet service finally came back online shortly after 11 p.m. Monday, according to Chinook Observer. Spectrum had initially told customers to expect restoration by 12:30 p.m. Sunday, an estimate that would have limited the outage to about five hours, but that timeline came and went without a fix.
After the initial estimate passed, the station's report notes Spectrum did not provide a new restoration time, and customers who spoke with company representatives said they were told the company didn't know when service would return. A spokesperson later attributed the outage to aerial fiber lines damaged by recent storms in the area, adding that the damaged lines were owned by a third-party vendor that was working to restore service to affected customers as soon as possible.
Storms, Terrain, and a Shifting Timeline
Spectrum said rough terrain and road conditions were complicating the repair work, and the company eventually said it anticipated restoration overnight Monday. A company spokesperson apologized for the inconvenience and thanked customers for their patience, per the same account. The outage affected both internet and telephone service for the duration.
Not every local network went down, though. Pacific County PUD said the fiber lines cited by Spectrum were not owned, operated, or maintained by the PUD, and that its own Peninsula fiber network was not involved in the outage and stayed in service throughout the storm.
Weekend Football and Weekday Work Disrupted
The timing hit particularly hard for sports fans. With the Seattle Seahawks facing the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday night football, local Spectrum customers had to fall back on cellphone viewing or phone-generated hotspots just to catch the game. The frustration spilled into the Long Beach Peninsula Friends of Facebook group, which has 27,000 members, where one user said they had to sacrifice a personal day because they couldn't work without internet.
Remote workers broadly reported disruptions as the new work week began, and local businesses said the outage disrupted non-cash payment processing and other operations. The following day, customers reported mixed luck seeking credits on their upcoming bills — some said they were able to receive upwards of $20, while others reported being offered just a few dollars.
Backup Options Locals Are Weighing
The outage has pushed some residents to look at backup connectivity options. Seaview-based Lay's Computer Repair said it personally uses a hotspot when these outages occur and suggested cellular backup could be a good option for some customers. Spectrum itself sells Invincible WiFi, a cellular backup add-on for residential internet that costs $20 per month without a promotional offer and provides unlimited data during non-power-related outages, though Spectrum's own site notes the service is available only with select internet plans and eligibility can vary. Others pointed to SpaceX subsidiary Starlink, which delivers internet through a constellation of more than 11,000 satellites, as another alternative. Rosburg-based Wahkiakum West Communications has also expanded broadband service into parts of the Peninsula in recent years, giving some residents another option beyond Spectrum's network.
A Broader Pattern of Unreliable Service
The outage lands amid wider frustration with internet reliability across the state. A Lightcurve survey of 600 Washington adults conducted in April 2026 found that 45% deal with service-disrupting slowdowns at least weekly, and only 21% believe the state has fast, reliable internet compared with the rest of the country. The same survey found cable internet remains the dominant connection type at 52% of Washington adults, while 15% of Washington internet users use fiber-optic service; 14% said unreliable internet has directly hurt their job performance and 19% said they'd pay more for service that actually delivered.
