Circling…

While tens of thousands of customers in the southeastern United States might describe the quality of Windstream service as something to avoid stepping in, turkey buzzards are generating plenty of the real thing in Nebraska, creating two major headaches for the independent telecom company.

As of this afternoon, at least 30,000 Windstream customers in the southeast U.S. cannot make or receive long distance or toll-free calls without encountering a fast busy signal or an intercept recording. In case callers forget what a regular busy signal sounds like, one can be heard by dialing Windstream’s national customer support number, which is overwhelmed with complaint calls from annoyed customers.

“Windstream’s network operations and engineering teams are working a widespread outage affecting long-distance and toll-free call processing,” Windstream customer support acknowledged this afternoon. “This has also affected inbound calling to our support centers. An estimated time for restoral is not known.”

That is not good enough for Windstream customer Megan Short. Anyone calling her business number is likely to hear a Windstream recording telling callers: “The number you have reached is not in service, disconnected, or has been changed.”

“I am trying to run a business here, and this issue needs to be resolved ASAP,” she wrote on the company’s Facebook page. “This is your job, you know. You have ONE JOB.”

Other customers are complaining the outage is affecting local calls as well.

Veterinary Ophthalmology Services near Nashville is having a very quiet Monday with “few calls in or out, so it can’t be just long distance numbers. The majority of our clients are local.”

The employees of Don Meyler Inspections had plenty of free time to inspect the morning newspaper, afternoon lunch, and their frustration level, because the phones simply are not ringing in south Florida either.

“We’re severely impacted for inbound calls and outbound is sporadic,” the company writes on DownDetector.com. “It is the worst outage we’ve had in six years.”

Those tenacious enough to wait for customer support are not exactly getting total customer satisfaction:

“The big kicker was being on hold with the online chat for over an hour only to inform me there was ‘a high call volume’ and then the chat session ended,” said Chad Spaulding in Louisville, Ky. “You can’t even reach the corporate office for support. This is the fourth outage in our area in two months.”

With outages like this, some might thing the buzzards would be circling, and in Beatrice, Neb. they literally are, according to the Omaha Herald-World, fouling Windstream-provisioned Verizon Wireless cell towers where the federally protected birds favor building their nests.

Windstream’s John Dageford presented the company’s solution to the annual poo-problem from the birds: shoot them.

Dageford thinks if someone kills a handful of the large birds, the rest will flee in terror.

The Beatrice council reserved its decision on how to proceed for now, although a number of Windstream customers affected by today’s outage may not.

Another reason to keep your landline. During major events, cell phone networks are quickly overwhelmed while wired phone lines still work.

The Associated Press is reporting minutes ago that a law enforcement official has ordered all cellphone service in the Boston area temporarily suspended to prevent any possibility of remote detonations of any other improvised explosive devices. But we have our doubts and in fact was able to reach one of our Boston readers by cell phone in downtown Boston just a moment ago.

“I can’t make calls on Verizon without getting a fast busy signal, but I am getting calls regularly at the moment,” reports Jim, one of our regular readers. “The cell networks are totally jammed with everyone on the phone in this city.”

Jim says a number of his co-workers had no idea there were two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon this afternoon, but word-of-mouth office gossip spread the news over the last hour or so.

“Landlines are working fine, which is another reason you cannot and should not rely on cell phones alone during a major news event or disaster, because they are highly vulnerable to capacity crushes,” Jim said. “Our Internet access at work has also slowed to an absolute crawl and you cannot access a lot of local news websites, so we’ve watched the coverage on over the air television.”

Numerous press reports speculate the two explosions that killed two and injured at least two dozen were the result of some type of explosive device, but law enforcement officials have refused to confirm those reports so far.

As of 5:15pm EDT, Sprint and Verizon Wireless reported they were attempting to maintain service as best as possible despite the flood of wireless calls, and no carrier has confirmed they have been asked to switch off service.

“We are experiencing call blocking due to what’s happening,” Mark Elliott, a Sprint spokesman told the Boston Globe. “The network is blocking calls because the number of calls coming in exceeds the capacity. There’s no way the network can handle that kind of traffic.”

Elliott is asking cell phone users to text messages to friends and loved ones and avoid voice calling until capacity improves. This can keep lines open and clear for emergency and law enforcement officials.

Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, issued a statement, saying: “Verizon Wireless has been enhancing network voice capacity to enable additional calling in the Copley Square area of Boston. Customers are advised to use text or email to free up voice capacity for public safety officials at the scene. There was no damage to the Verizon Wireless network, which is seeing elevated calling and data usage throughout the region since the explosions occurred.”

Update 5:54pm EDT: The Associated Press has officially retracted their earlier story. There has been no request to suspend cell phone service, but carriers are impacted by heavy call volumes.

It’s 27 degrees outside, the oranges are turning into orangesicles, and now this.

AT&T reports an independent construction crew in Volusia County accidentally cut a fiber cable that has resulted in a major cell phone outage for residents across northern and central Florida.

“An AT&T wireless disruption is currently impacting some customers in parts of Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Daytona, Ocala, Gainesville, and Panama City,” says an AT&T spokesperson. “Some customers may have trouble connecting to voice calls and voicemail at this time.”

AT&T is trying to repair the cable to restore service.

Stop the Cap! reader Jasper in Wildwood, Fla., wonders how one fiber cut can take out AT&T’s cell phone network for half the state.

“This sure isn’t your father’s AT&T,” Jasper writes. “Hasn’t AT&T ever heard of redundant backup systems for just these occasions?”

Jasper noticed his AT&T cell phone service quit connecting calls earlier this evening.

“It’s either a fast busy signal or nothing at all,” Jasper reports.  “AT&T froze us out.”