Cable Cut Cause Phone Outage In Walnut Hill, Molino; Cellular Out Too

August 7, 2008

Several thousand Frontier Communications in the Walnut Hill and Molino telephone exchanges were without phone service for over an hour Wednesday afternoon following a cable cut in Davisville. An unknown number of cellular phone users in the area were also unable to make calls for a short period of time due to the cable cut.

The outage stemmed from a fiber optic cable cut near Highway 4 and Highway 97 in Davisville. The cable was being moved as part of a highway construction project and was accidentally cut, according to Karen Miller, a public relations specialist for Frontier Communications.

The telephone service in both the 327 and 587 exchanges went down about 12:40 Wednesday afternoon for 4,600 customers. Frontierustomers the exchanges could only call other Frontier customers within their local exchange. They were unable to call Atmore or Pensacola numbers. (Atmore numbers are local to the 327 exchange, and Pensacola numbers are local for both 327 and 587.) It was also not possible for customers in the area to reach long distance or toll free numbers. Emergency 911 service was also not available during the outage.

Customers calling the exchange were reporting fast busy signals and calls that did not complete.

DSL and other dialup internet connections also went down about 12:40, but DSL was once again available as of 1:50 p.m.

Problems were also reported making calls on Alltel wireless phones in the area.

Andrew Moreau, vice president of corporate communications for Alltel, told NorthEscambia.com that the cable cut did cause an outage for Alltel customers in the area. While the cable was a Frontier cable, Alltel uses Frontier to carry some calls from their towers in North Escambia to the telephone network.

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Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News