GTE fiber-terminal failure affects long-distance service in hree states

The Associated Press 09/15/99 2:15 PM Eastern

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) -- Long-distance telephone service was knocked out briefly today in parts of Washington, Oregon and Northern Idaho after a fiber-terminal failure, GTE spokewoman Melissa Barran said.

Barran said GTE discovered the internal power failure at 7:15 a.m. at a company switching office in Everett, 30 miles north of Seattle. Local telephone service was not affected.

The outage, which lasted for more than two hours, affected customer attempts to make long distance calls. It appeared incoming long-distance calls were not affected.

The company still does not know how many customers were affected by the outage, Barran said.

http://flash.oregonlive.com/cgi-bin/or_nview.pl?/home1/wire/AP/Stream-Parsed/OREGON_NEWS/o1263_PM_WA--PhoneOutage

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), September 15, 1999

Answers

From being in the field, I can tell you that fiber optic cable is expensive to put in, very low cost to maintain...and pure hell when it goes down.

-- Mr. Mike (mikeabn@aol.com), September 15, 1999.