Fiber optic break causes outages in region By CHRIS PORTER Executive Editor Two separate fiber optic line cuts caused phone and Internet service outages for thousands of customers in Southwest Florida Friday afternoon. One work crew cut a Florida Power & Light FiberNet line near Toledo Blade Boulevard in North Port, and another crew cut a line near Orlando, shutting out service just before 1 p.m. Many in South Sarasota County, along with Charlotte and DeSoto counties, remained without service until about 5:30 p.m. While FPL FiberNet doesn’t serve residential customers, one of its customers is Verizon, explained Nancy Reynolds, director of customer service for FPL Fibernet. Verizon provides residential and business phone service, Internet and wireless service, plus broadband and television service through FIOS to thousands in Southwest Florida. Reynolds said two independent companies cut the lines, but she did not identify the companies. If only one line had been cut, she explained, service would have been routed through the other. “Our network has built-in redundancies, but when there are two cuts like this, the connection is broken,” she said. “It’s very unusual.” FPL FiberNet is Verizon’s connection to the rest of the world in South Florida, said Chuck Hamby, spokesman for Verizon Wireless in Florida. He did not know how many Verizon customers were out of service. “We just don’t know yet,” he said. Sun phones down Because of the outage, customers trying to call several Sun Newspaper offices were not able to get through. Phones at the North Port and Englewood offices, the Paulson Drive office in Murdock, and the Purple House in Punta Gorda were out. Internet service also was down, as was access to the online electronic edition to the paper. Email: porter@sun-herald
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 23:45:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015