Hundreds of Cablevision customers wondering what is being done about the outages to their service, due to last Thursday's storm, can expect to be out of cable until at least Wednesday.

Jeremy Elmas, the company's general manager said those who have experienced outages of the service for more than 24 hours due to the storm, would not be expected to pay their full monthly bill.

Although many residents said they understand that damages during bad weather are unpreventable, they added that Cablevision should go to greater lengths to keep their customers informed.

"They have a monopoly over the service," said one Sandy's Parish resident. "There's nothing we could do even if we wanted to. We are at their mercy. I have been listening to the radio since the storm and I haven't heard anything about what they are doing to restore service. I hear about the electricity, but not them."

But Mr. Elmas said: "I am very aware that there are households without service and all of our trucks have been out. But most people do have cable and by the middle of next week, 99 percent of the service should be restored. We are working to replace the main lines first."

But that has been of little comfort to residents up and down the Island scratching their heads and feeling cut off from what has been going on, even though they had electricity restored. While the utilities have been keeping their customers abreast of their restoration efforts through regular media reports, Cablevision only revealed to The Royal Gazette yesterday what they were doing.

But Mr. Elmas assured The Royal Gazette he sent out media advisories and notices.

"We don't work on Sundays," Mr. Elmas said. "And you cannot call the office, because we are not accepting any phone calls. We are trying to restore the `trunk' or the back bone of the system and then we will go out and work on individual households. If we have a major trunk that is out in Paget then chances are that parts of Warwick are affected."