Subject: [NEXTEL-1] City loses Internet, cell service Damaged fiber optic blamed for problems

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 17:27:33 -0400

City loses Internet, cell service Damaged fiber optic blamed for problems
By SABRINA MCCORMICKand JODI SHERIDAN
Texarkana Gazette

Texarkana Gazette

Long-distance, cellular, fax, Internet and 911 services were down in Texarkana
Monday after a fiber optic cable about five miles outside Marietta, Texas, in
Northwest Cass County was cut by a state highway construction crew.
New Boston, Hooks, Redwater, Hughes Springs, Simms, Maud, DeKalb and some areas in
southwest Arkansas were also affected.

Officials with VALOR Telecom learned of the outage about 3:45 p.m. and identified
it to the Hughes Springs area of Cass County where the fiber optic hardware is
located, VALOR representative Yolanda Franklin said in a statement.
Crews began replacing the damaged cable about 6:30 p.m. and estimated service
could be restored by 11 p.m. Monday.
The outage left many area Internet and cellular phone customers without service
and trying to get some answers.
Jay Butler, the general manager of CableONE, said the company's Internet service,
which caters to about 6,000 customers, was down. "Whatever is causing the phone
and cell lines not to work is the same problem that is causing the Internet not to
work," said Butler.

Greg Saulsbury, the owner of TXK.net, which services several thousand customers,
said there was only one line calling out of Texarkana, that one belonging to AT&T.
When the Gazette contacted the local VALOR office Monday evening, a customer
service representative said the line cut belonged to AT&T. "That sounds about
right, because VALOR and others use strands of fiber like that," said Saulsbury.

Saulsbury said he didn't have a timeframe in which the problem could be fixed, but
it would probably take somewhere in the ballpark of four to six hours. Attempts to
reach AT&T officials were unsuccessful. However, cell phone service for that
company worked while cell phone service for Sprint and Alltel did not. VIDCOM
Center was the only Internet provider that was not completely shut down on Monday.

Morris Allen, president and CEO of VIDCOM, said they use BGP routing, which
utilizes built-in redundancies. Allen explains BGP routing is nothing new to
Internet Service Providers.

"We go out to different carriers and buy band widths from each of them so you
don't put all your eggs in one basket," Allen said. He explains a redundancy is
simply an emergency back-up system similar to ones used on space shuttles in case
something goes wrong.

Allen said, for example, it's like having water piped in from many sources to one
location, if one pipe gets severed or clogged, a back-up pipe still has water. "We
are prepared for issues like this, most of our customers are commercial and if
they are not up, they are not making money," Allen said. "We have one router that
receives 117,000 hits a day," He said.
Allen said a router is a computer, which operates much like a roadmap that directs
signals from point a to point b.

"The router does nothing more than get you to the site you want to view," he said.
Cellular and Internet services were not the only communications experiencing
difficulties. The 911 system in Miller County and the Bi-State Justice Building,
which services the two Texarkana police departments and Bowie County Sheriff's
Department, were down as well. "There are some nonemergency numbers we've been
giving out to the public to call," said Emergency Management Coordinator Dave
Hall.

Capt. Ernest Keck with the Texarkana, Ark., Police Department and the
representative for all the agencies in Central Records and Communications said the
severed line was the culprit for the downed system and keeping people safe and
calm was their main concern. "We are also assuming responsibility for Miller
County Sheriff's Office," said Keck.

Capt. Glenn Greenwell with the Texarkana, Ark., Police Department said things in
the communications department were going as well as could be expected Monday
night. "We have not had an increase in calls and we've been monitoring things
pretty closely. All in all, we feel things are going as well as can be," he said.

Until service is restored, the emergency service number for Texarkana's 911 system
are 903-798-3876 or 903-798-3877.

A local bank and a discount store reported no problems in business because of the
outage in service.

http://www.texarkanagazette.com/articles/2003/08/19/news/news02.txt

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