People and businesses across Taos County were forced to rough it last month as phone and internet services went down from June 5 to June 7 affecting customers of CenturyLink, Comcast, TaosNet, Verizon, and AT&T.

“The telecommunication outage began at 3:15 pm on Monday June 5, 2023 and was fully restored on June 7, 2023 around 9 pm,” said Kit Carson Electric Cooperative CEO Luis Reyes in a statement to the Questa del Rio News. “All service providers except Kit Carson Internet were impacted.”

Independent tech contractor, Mike Barbee, also gave the Questa News a statement saying that Kit Carson also experienced a brief outage from approximately 3:15 pm to 3:21 pm on June 5.

“During this period CenturyLink landlines could dial local landline numbers in the valley including Taos, Questa, and Red River but not cell phones. Cell phones or other external numbers dialing CenturyLink numbers received a busy signal. . . . CenturyLink and TaosNet internet services were completely down. Kit Carson was struggling to provide consistent service (they had latency lags and dropped packets), but they were up,” said Barbee.

300 electrical splices had to be made in controlled environments and specialized crews were needed which is why the outage lasted so long.

Brownrice Internet, the company that hosts the website for www.questanews.com, was down from about 3:22 pm on June 5 and was restored at about 5:00 pm on June 7.

Disclosure: Mike Barbee also works for the Questa del Rio News.