There were reports of phone and internet outages in Southern Illinois which started at 1:50 PM on Monday, March 18, 2024. The sheriff's offices in Randolph, Williamson, Franklin, and Jefferson Counties all reported phone outages. Area schools and District offices reported issues too. Agencies pinned the problem on a widespread Clearwave outage. Clearwave claims to be Southern Illinois' leader in fiber-optic based telecommunications.

It was not until 5:30 PM that day that phone and internet services started to come back online for area businesses across portions of southern Illinois. Read more about this story on our LinkedIn page