A representative of Communicomm, a local cable TV provider, apologized at last week’s Town Council meeting for a nearly three-day service outage in Branford. Service was interrupted on Tuesday, Jan. 20 and wasn’t restored until the 23rd.

Local Communicomm representative Darrell Liard apologized to the council and attendees at the monthly council meeting on Feb. 10. According to Liard, when service personnel checked the tower site on Jan. 21 in response to reports of an outage, they discovered the transmitter unit was dead. A spare unit was pulled from inventory but proved defective. Another spare was located in Old Town, but it was dark by the time it could be retrieved, and company safety regulations prohibit climbing the tower after dark.

The crew arrived before daylight the following morning but the tower was icy so they delayed the project until sunup.

Liard said he asked his office to notify Town Hall of the delays, but for some reason that didn’t happen.

Liard called the extended outage “a rare event. I have worked for this company for 20 years and this is the second time a microwave has not been repaired the same day.”

Part of the problem was that calls to Communicomm during the outage were not answered – meaning the phone rang off the hook at Town Hall.

“We expect good service for our citizens,” said Council Chair Shirley Clark,

who asked Laird for accurate contact information.

Liard gave a toll-free number for public use in the event of an outage or other problem: 800-392-2662. Liard also gave Town Clerk Donna Hardin his desk phone number as he again apologized.