*Shentel: Internet service has been restored

By Amber Marra -- amarra@nvdaily.com

Nearly 33 hours after a Wednesday-morning outage, thousands of Internet users in Shenandoah County had their service restored early Thursday evening, according to David Ferguson, vice president of customer service at Shentel.

The outage began about about 9:40 a.m. Wednesday and continued through Thursday due to a power surge that damaged not only Shentel's online equipment, but also its back-up system, Ferguson said.

Normally, the equipment needed to restore service takes about four hours to arrive from the vendor Shentel uses in Boston, but Ferguson said that flight delays stemming from the harsh winter weather in the northeast have caused significant delays.

Replacement equipment arrived at 10:30 a.m. Thursday and Shentel restored service early Thursday evening, according to Ferguson.

"We do apologize for any inconvenience this has caused our businesses and our customers," he said earlier in the day. "We take this outage very seriously."

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