Service interruptions

If you are a regular listener, you already know that lately we have been plagued by service interruptions.  Quite simply, we are at the mercy of Verizon who provide our internet service.  Trust me when I tell you that we are vexed by this issue and are working on solutions.  Our tower location does not have any other service options besides Verizon.  There is no Metrocast service.  Our efforts to nail down a cause to the problems are hampered by the fact that they come and go, and seem to fix themselves before we can engage Verizon to find and fix them.  They last anywhere from a few seconds to many minutes.

We are working on some backup systems, which would at least keep something on the air during a Verizon outage.  That will take some engineering effort and time, but we are working on it.  Thankfully we have no lack of technical expertise among our volunteers, but we all have ‘day jobs’ which prevent us from giving full time to keeping WWER on the air.  We wish we could!

You might wonder why I am putting a spotlight on this shortcoming of ours, when rule #1 of PR is to not highlight the bad things!  The reason is that I believe in transparency, especially when it comes to public services like our community radio station.  Like good friends, we have our flaws, but good friends accept each other, flaws and all.

So I can only apologize for the interruptions for now, but I promise that we are working on it!  Please bear with us.

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Ted Tait

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