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Cut cable quiets Sprint service in West
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- Users of Sprint's mobile and long-distance phone service in the Western United States faced a widespread outage that lasted more than three hours Monday after a fiber-optic cable was cut in California, the telephone company said. The outage affected customers using long-distance and Internet services across much of the region. The problems began about 3:30 p.m. ET and affected wireless phones on the Sprint PCS and Nextel networks, as well as landline service, said John Taylor, Sprint's manager of public affairs. Internet service on Sprint Nextel phones was also delayed, the company said. "A fiber-optic cable was cut between Phoenix [Arizona] and Palm Springs, California," said Taylor. Taylor said Sprint and Nextel customers had no problems making or receiving local calls, and he was not aware of any disruptions to 911 service or other local emergency calls. He did not have any estimates on the number of customers affected. Sprint, based in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Kansas, is the fourth-largest U.S. phone company. At the time of the outage, other Sprint crews were working on emergency maintenance near Reno Junction, California, on the California-Nevada border. As a result, the company had rerouted network traffic through Phoenix before the cut, making the outage more widespread than it would have been, Taylor said. Service was fully restored by 7 p.m. ET, after the lines in both locations were put back on line, Taylor said. When a fiber-optic line is cut, the repair can be a tedious process, requiring scores of lines to be spliced together. "We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience," Taylor said. 
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