CA Crippling phone shutdown

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Posted at 11:15 p.m. PST Sunday, March 12, 2000

Crippling phone shutdown

Merchants suffer after accident cuts off credit cards, faxes, Net BY DALE RODEBAUGH AND BILL ROMANO Mercury News Staff Writers

A third day without telephone service in some northeast San Jose neighborhoods is playing havoc with business, grumbling merchants said Sunday. Worse yet, Pacific Bell can't tell them exactly when service will be restored.

In at least two shopping centers near Brokaw Road and Interstate 800, restaurants, a grocery store and other businesses were unable to talk to customers by phone, use their faxes or Internet connections or put through credit card transactions.

Peter Liu, a clerk at the World Journal Book Store in the Pacific Rim Plaza, said the store lost sales because he couldn't use the store's credit card processor. Customers who counted on paying with a credit card left the store empty-handed.

``We're the biggest Chinese book store in the Bay Area. We fax orders to China and Taiwan. At least, we did until Friday. And if books have arrived at the airport, we don't know about it,'' Liu said.

Aaron Zhou, manager of Ranch Market, who estimated 50 percent of his customers pay with a credit card, said that's been impossible since Friday.

``The telephone is our lifeline,'' he said. ``It hasn't been easy to get through to my main office in Hayward where I get my merchandise and from where I learn about price changes.''

Cell phones have only partially connected them to customers and suppliers, the merchants said.

Crimp in day trading

Area day traders, dependent on the Internet for a link to the financial world, also have been idle since Friday.

``I have friends who are losing big money because they can't do business,'' said Joe Ma who runs Dynasty Pure Water in the Pacific Rim Plaza.

Ma also is worried because his mother is due in from Taiwan today. He said that while he lives in a neighborhood unaffected by the telephone outage, long hours in the store have prevented him from talking to her since last week. He couldn't call the airport from his store, he said.

The outage started at 1 a.m. Friday when a contractor for a private company digging a trench near Brokaw and I-880 sliced four cables containing 11,000 lines. That disrupted service in an area bounded generally on the west by I-880, Trimble Road on the north, Interstate 680 on the east and Berryessa Road on the south.

Pacific Bell spokesman Rodd Aubrey said it is hard to tell how many customers are actually involved because some businesses could have only a single line while others may be served by many more. Some phone service had been restored by Sunday, but he couldn't say exactly how much.

Crews, he said, have been toiling non-stop -- splicing lines together one by one and then testing each about a half-dozen times.

``We have people working elbow to elbow down inside of manholes. We're putting every single body we can down there to get this situation solved as soon as possible,'' he said.

``It's very labor-intensive work, but we're going to work 24 hours a day until it's done. The weather is helping us.''

There were seven workers mending cables in one manhole alone, he said.

Pac Bell is contacting customers as their line is restored, Aubrey said. ``It's our top priority . . . We know how important this is to these people. It is important to us, too.''

Lance Archer, president of Electronic Eyelet and Interconnect Inc. -- an electronic hardware distributor on Bern Court -- can't get his service back soon enough.

Business meltdown

With a dozen in-coming phone lines, a fax and a dedicated dial-up line as well as a high-speed Internet hookup, Archer's firm handles product orders on a daily basis. His business operation has come to a virtual standstill, Archer said. He estimates he's losing $25,000 a day.

For Archer, the shutdown has been particularly galling.

Eight months ago, workers driving piles for a bridge on Old Oakland Road cut into an underground cable and knocked out his phones and other communication links for seven days, he said.

Archer and other merchants are frustrated by the mixed messages they say they've gotten from Pac Bell on when service will be back up.

``I had to make a huge stink,'' Archer complained. ``Front-line people said service will be back by March 21 at 8 p.m. Others said by the early part of this week.''

Zhou, also impatient, said the phone is needed for more than just conducting business.

``Last week a customer had a heart attack in the fish department. We were able to call the emergency number quickly on the telephone,'' he said.

http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/050719.htm



-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 13, 2000

Answers

update

Posted at 6:30 a.m. PST Tuesday, March 14, 2000

Silicon Valley neighborhood struggling without working phone lines SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- In the heart of the Silicon Valley, phone lines are a necessity. So after three days without service, some businesses here were understandably angry.

An outage that started early Friday meant at least two shopping centers, a grocery store, a few restaurants and other small businesses were unable to talk to their customers, use fax machines or get on to the Internet.

Credit card sales, approved over phone lines, were impossible, said Peter Liu, a clerk at the World Journal Book Store in Pacific Rim Plaza.

``We're the biggest Chinese book store in the Bay Area. We fax orders to China and Taiwan. At least, we did until Friday. And if books have arrived at the airport, we don't know about it,'' Liu said.

Aaron Zhou, manager of Ranch Market, estimated 50 percent of his customers pay with credit cards.

``The telephone is our lifeline,'' he said. ``It hasn't been easy to get through to my main office in Hayward where I get my merchandise and from where I learn about price changes.''

Day traders in the area that are dependent on the Internet were also helpless without phone lines.

Lance Archer, president of Electronic Eyelet and Interconnect Inc., an electronic hardware distributor on Bern Court, estimated he had lost $25,000 a day.

``I had to make a huge stink,'' Archer said about his contact with the phone company. ``Front-line people said service will be back by March 21 at 8 p.m. Others said by the early part of this week.''

The outage started early Friday when a private contractor accidentally cut four phone cables. About 11,000 phone lines were severed, Pacific Bell spokesman Rodd Aubrey said.

About half of the customers had phone service by Monday. There was no estimated repair time for the others, Aubrey said.

``Each line needs to be spliced by hand one-by-one,'' he said. ``It's a very meticulous, laborious process.''

Aubrey said that about 60 percent of the phone lines that were cut belonged to businesses.

http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/031982.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 14, 2000.


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