SIDNEY -- Charter Communications customers, business and residential, are experiencing an outage today.

Charter Communications confirmed with News Channel Nebraska this morning that there is an outage impacting customers with home, phone, internet and cable.

At the time of the call, the company did not have a timeline on when service will be restored. News Channel Nebraska was told technicians have been dispatched and work is in progress. The outage started about 5 a.m. Mountain Time.

"Some customers in the Sidney area may be experiencing a service interruption after heavy ice damaged some fiber optic cables. We have crews onsite working to make the necessary repairs and restore services as quickly as possible," said Wes Shirley, Charter Communications director of communications, St. Peters, MO.

Meanwhile, residents woke to electronic appliances with no service, businesses could not accept debit or credit card payments. Later this morning, Sidney Regional Medical Center and The Silver Dollar Bar & Grill were added to the list of businesses and services impacted by the outage.

Estimated time service will be restored is 3 p.m. today.

The Silver Dollar announced its Spectrum (Charter Communications) internet, television and phone service are down and cannot take credit card payments until they are restored.

Impact on Sidney Regional Medical Center:
Currently there is a service outage with Spectrum that is affecting the following SRMC locations:
• Some inbound and outbound phone lines will be impacted. Our inbound 254-7268 number IS impacted as it is still hosted through Spectrum.
• Our 254-8778 (Business Office) primary inbound number IS also impacted. Both inbound and outbound calls are affected.
• All TV services ARE impacted. Spectrum TV service inpatient rooms, resident rooms (LTC), and TVs in common areas ARE impacted.
Please be assured that our primary 254-5825 number, our WIC 254-4752, our LTC 254-7303, and our Sloan Estates 254-4801 numbers are NOT impacted and should be working as normal.
Thank you for your patience as we work on restoring our phone lines and TV.
 
News Channel Nebraska has contacted Charter Communications with no response as of 11:55 a.m.