Stay-at-home orders to combat the COVID-19 pandemic have led to increased internet business for Longview Kilgore Cable and more calls for technical support, General Manager George Doss said.

“Like this week, we’ve got 250 installs to do,” Doss said Tuesday. He said the cable company is on track to for 1,000 installations this month, up from a typical 800 per month. However, he said some customers have asked to reschedule installations and service because of the new coronavirus and the need to maintain social distancing of 6 feet or more between people.

“It is just because of the people staying home from school and work,” Doss said. “We’ve had an increase in our traffic and our network.”

That, in turn, explains why Longview Cable on April 2 posted on its Facebook page that the number of calls for technical support increased by more than 30%.

“There are times when there is no hold time, but there are also larger spikes in calls that occur during various times of the day,” the post said. 

“There are simply more people home now, during all hours of the day, doing more activities on the internet and requesting assistance with home network support and general questions regarding their devices and connecting to the Wi-Fi,” the post said.

Before the pandemic, the peak period of use occurred from 6 to 10 p.m., Doss said. 

“Now, they (customers) are home 24/7, so our peak is running throughout the day, but we do monitor our traffic,” Doss said. “We make adjustments accordingly.”

Doss said one reason for more calls is customers are using more than one Wi-Fi device at home.

“If a customer has five wireless devices, they all share the same bandwidth,” Doss said.

Since the pandemic, Conterra Networks has received some requests from customers to increase their bandwidth, said Shane Turley, executive vice president and general counsel.

However, “99.9%-plus” of Conterra’s customers are businesses and government agencies, not individuals, he said.

“We don’t serve, for the most part, those residential consumers,” Turley said. Conterra, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, bought Longview-based Network Communications in 2018.

“Bandwidths allows them to send more data,” Turley said. “If they increase the bandwidth, that would allow them to send more data across their services.”

Conterra serves an area extending from California to the East Coast but primarily Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana and North Carolina, Turley said.

Throughout the world, quarantines have made people more reliant on the internet to communicate, work, learn and stay entertained, the New York Times reported recently. But as the use of YouTube, Netflix, Zoom videoconferencing, Facebook calls and videogaming has surged to new highs, the stress on internet infrastructure is starting to show in the United States and Europe — and the traffic is probably far from its peak.

Internet service providers such as Comcast, Verizon, Vodafone and Telefónica have been building out their networks for years to account for increasing demand. But company officials said they had never seen such a steep, sudden surge. 

Cellphone companies have seen increased volumes, as well.

AT&T spokesman Charles Bassett said in a statement: “We’re aware some mobile customers in the Longview area may be experiencing trouble accessing websites on their phones during peak times. We are looking into optimizing service.”

He advised customers to go to about.att.com/pages/COVID-19.html#network .

Representatives at Verizon could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile,the Longview Kilgore Cable offices at 711 N. High St. in Longview and 116 S. Kilgore St. in Kilgore are staying open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekdays. Doss said employees are maintaining social distancing.