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Cut cable affects phones throughout large part of the state(The Journal Star Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) PEORIA - An ATandT fiber optic cable accidently cut near Joliet jammed phones in central Illinois Wednesday evening, officials said. ATandT land lines and cell phones were impacted, along with Nextel, Sprint, Verizon and U.S. Cellular cell phones because these companies apparently share routing lines with ATandT, local phone representatives said. The sporadic outages lasted from about 3 to 8 p.m., ATandT spokesman Chris Comes said, and stretched from the Metro East area to Joliet. Comes said Wednesday evening he could not verify the cause of the outage. But local law enforcement, including Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy and Creve Coeur Police Chief Michael Button said they were told it was because of a cut cable in Joliet. "Somehow a main line got cut," Button said. "They've got a crew on it and it's supposed to be fixed relatively quickly because it's an emergency line." Law enforcement reported people were able to call 911 from land lines, but not cell phones. About 7 p.m., David Tuttle, manager of the city's emergency communications center, sent out an e-mail advising people to call 911 from land lines because "some cell phones may not be able to reach 911." "Callers are asked not to test their phones by calling 911; only call 911 in an emergency," he advised. Other police and fire officials reported sporadic problems, though not every department could be reached. Calling the Pekin Police Department and Tazewell County Sheriff's Department resulted in an error message. The phone lines to the East Peoria and Peoria police departments were working throughout the evening. Peoria-area phone users began reporting problems making or receiving calls beginning about 3 p.m. Sprint customer Crystal Reece said she could make calls but not receive them. "It's making my social life and business life difficult," she said, noting that her fiancee had been worried because he could not reach her for several hours. But in the end, it worked out. He eventually sent a text message. And she was able to make contact with a friend, also a Sprint user, who had the opposite problem: she could receive calls, but not make them. "Make some sense out of that," Reece said, laughing. Jewel Tucker, an employee at Peoria's Sprint store in the Metro Center, said "tons" of calls came into the store Wednesday afternoon from frustrated customers. "We just use some of (ATandT's) routing lines to route calls through and what's going on right now, well, it's just gone nutso with how telephone calls are being routed," she said. The problem stretched throughout the region and caused a hiccup in technologically driven lifestyles. At least 60 percent of District 150's phones were affected, spokeswoman Stacey Shangraw said. "It's an inconvenience, but we're aware of the situation, and we know the phone company will put their crews on it as soon as they can. A lot of us are using our cell phones," Shangraw said. The district notified parents of the problem via news release, she said. "It does impact our parents, and we want to let parents know we are experiencing that problem in case they're trying to reach us," Shangraw said in the early afternoon. Molly Parker can be reached at (309) 686-3285 or [email protected]. Clare Jellick, Kevin Sampier and Frank Radosevich II contributed information to this story. Copyright 2007 Copley News Service |