AT&T customers in the Vallecito Lake area have been left without cellphone service for more than a week, and are wondering what is going on.
Robin Wicka, who runs The Weminuche Woodfire Grill in Vallecito, said the outage has thrown a wrench in her operation, as well as the daily lives of the people who call Vallecito home. AT&T suggest residents make phone calls using Wi-Fi, but homes in the area do not always have the best Wi-Fi signals, leaving them in a lurch.
“I haven't been able to do any business on my phone at all,” Wicka said. “As far as the Weminuche goes, some of the employees can’t get a hold of us either because they don’t have any service, so if they’re running late, nobody knows why.”
According to a representative at the AT&T store in Durango, the outage was caused by restoration work to the area’s only AT&T cellphone tower meant to provide the area with 5G cell coverage. Another representative whom The Durango Herald was able to contact through AT&T’s customer service line said the outage should be fixed by Wednesday, according to the carrier’s internal network.
“I really hope that by tomorrow the people that have been affected can get better service,” the representative said. “But it’s going to be a matter of time.”
But, according to another Vallecito Lake resident who requested to remain anonymous, the network has made promises that the outage would be fixed by a certain date, only to be pushed back.
“Everybody’s getting different stories from AT&T,” they said. “Every time they tell them a date, it’s getting delayed and delayed.”
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
