More than 200 Lehigh Acres households have been offline for eight days, and the people losing pay were offered a 15 dollar credit

Neighbours in Lehigh Acres have been without internet for eight days after a third-party contractor damaged multiple sections of Quantum Fiber's fibre optic cables, WINK News reported Tuesday evening.

Quantum Fiber's online outage map shows more than 200 households affected, according to the report. An AT&T spokesperson, speaking for what WINK described as Quantum Fiber's parent company, said the company appreciates customers' patience while repairs are being made.

That parent relationship is recent. Lumen Technologies announced on February 2, 2026 that it had completed the sale of its mass markets fibre-to-the-home business in eleven states, including Quantum Fiber, to AT&T for $5.75 billion in cash. Lumen said the sale covered substantially all of the related consumer fibre access network and customer relationships in those states, serving more than 1 million fibre customers and reaching more than 4 million enabled fibre locations.

What it has cost the people affected

Two residents who work from home described the outage to WINK in terms of lost income rather than inconvenience.

Niki Bond works in healthcare from home and said she must be connected by ethernet rather than a wifi signal because of client protection requirements, which rules out the workarounds other neighbours have used. She told WINK she had not been paid for the week and had no accrued time off to fall back on.

She described herself to WINK as "a nervous wreck" over the risk to her job, and put the pressure in terms of ordinary household obligations: "You have bills. You have a baby." She said she had no paid time off accrued, so the week off work was a week unpaid.

She said her employer's policy allows termination when someone calls out three days in a row, and that she was surprised still to have the job. Bond said she contacted Quantum Fiber, explained the situation, and was offered a 15 dollar credit.

Her response to that offer, as she recounted it to WINK, was that 15 dollars did not measure against a lost paycheck or against the stress of telling her employer every morning that the internet was still down.

Christopher Perez, who also works from home, told WINK his frustration was with the communication rather than the fault itself, saying the updates kept promising a fix that night. He said he asked about a discount and was told the following month would be covered, then was charged for it a few days later.

Other neighbours who work from home have gone to restaurants and coffee shops with public wifi, WINK reported.

What is not known

The residents said they want more transparency about when service will be restored and what stage the repairs have reached. Bond said that had she been told the outage would be a long one, she could have arranged to stay with family, who live more than five hours away. She said she had looked into switching providers, but was told a technician could not connect her for at least a week.

WINK said it went back to AT&T for a better understanding of the repair process and had not heard back. No restoration date has been reported.