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Verizon outage affecting Florida long-distance, data serviceDec 08, 2011 (Tampa Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- TAMPA Much of Verizon's long-distance telephone service in Florida turned off Thursday after a piece of network equipment broke down near Orlando. The outage appeared to start about 1:30 p.m., said Verizon spokeswoman Bob Elek. By 5:37 p.m., the system was back to normal, Elek said.. The outage affected some data services that travel over long-distance lines, including some wide-area networks at companies in the area. Depending on how calls were routed, customers trying to call into or outside Tampa received error messages. Verizon provides service to about a million access lines in Pinellas County, Hillsborough, portions of Polk, portions of Pasco, Manatee and Sarasota. The outage did not seem to discriminate between customers with Verizon's traditional copper phone line service or its fiber-optic connections. Verizon does not provide long-distance service in the eastern or southern part of Florida, so those areas should not have been affected, Elek said. Also, local phone service should not be affected, and Verizon's cellular service appears unaffected as well. The outage came a day after Verizon's cellular arm, Verizon Wireless, suffered its own sporadic, nationwide outage of 4G cellular data service. Spokesman Chuck Hamby said that outage lasted much of Wednesday, and technicians are still trying to identify why it only affected some cities, some devices and some customers. "It was just sporadic," Hamby said. "It affected Miami a bit, Tampa a bit, Chicago a little, and not all devices in all ways." Such outages can bring some companies to a fast halt. Earlier this summer Bright House Networks suffered an outage of its network that affected much of its customer base in Florida. ___ (c)2011 the Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Fla.) Visit the Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Fla.) at www.tampatrib.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |