- Dates
- 2017-05-12 – 2017-05-14
- Kind
- Announcement
- Where
- Beaver Island
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- communicationinfrastructureemergency-servicespublic-safety
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
On May 12, 2017, WVBI reported an island-wide disruption affecting internet, cellular, and off-island communications. At Beaver Island EMS’s request, the station directed residents to call the Health Center rather than rely on 911 until the emergency-calling system was cleared.
Evidence limits
This is a contemporaneous public-safety notice, not an independent carrier postmortem. The archive does not establish the exact cause, geographic limits, or complete duration of the outage.
Sources
See the sources block above.
Sources
- WVBI reported that internet, cellular, and off-island links had been down since approximately 11 a.m.; at Beaver Island EMS’s request it directed emergency callers to the Health Center number rather than relying on 911. A follow-up said some phones had returned but the 911 center still advised against relying on 911 until AT&T cleared the system. The forum report is a contemporaneous local broadcaster/EMS notice; the archive does not contain an AT&T incident report or complete outage log.forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 11 · t011538
- WVBI reported that a storm damaged a microwave link between its studio and transmitter, temporarily moving programming online, then reported returning to 100.1 FM through a backup connection while repairs continued. These notices document a later broadcast-link incident and recovery sequence, distinct from the May AT&T outage.forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 11 · t011695
- WVBI reported that a storm damaged a microwave link between its studio and transmitter, temporarily moving programming online, then reported returning to 100.1 FM through a backup connection while repairs continued. These notices document a later broadcast-link incident and recovery sequence, distinct from the May AT&T outage.forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 11 · t011707
Added 7 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Beaver Island experiences a communications and 911-access disruption, 2017”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/beaver-island-communications-and-911-outage-may-2017/, accessed [date], citing WVBI, “Communications Outage; Emergency Calls Directed to 448-2275,” Beaver Island Forum, May 12, 2017. (and 1 further source listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-07. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Beaver Island experiences a communications and 911-access disruption, 2017”RIS for “Beaver Island experiences a communications and 911-access disruption, 2017”