CO - At&T Cable Cut Blamed for Outage of 105,000 Customers

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At&T Cable Cut At New Stadium Television, Internet Customers Lose Service Due To Worker Error

Source: Denver Rocky Mountain News Publication date: 2000-06-06

Construction workers at the new Denver Broncos football stadium severed two fiber-optic lines Monday, interrupting service to about 105,000 cable television and Internet customers.

The fiber-optic lines carried a cable television signal from AT&T Cable Services' nearby head-end plant. About 100,000 AT&T customers were without service for more than two hours, and the company continued to work into the evening to restore service to about 5,000 customers in southwest Denver.

Areas affected by the accident included: portions of Jefferson County, Lakewood, Englewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree, Castle Rock, Parker, Greenwood Village and Denver.

Some of the customers whose service was restored Monday still had minor glitches in their channel lineup, with full normal service not scheduled to resume until early today.

"Customers in those areas might notice their lineup is slightly different because we have switched on a generic lineup on an interim basis," said AT&T Cable spokesman Matt Fleury. "Overnight, we will switch them back to their original lineup as we complete the repair of the fiber at the Mile High (Stadium) construction site."

No one identified the culprit who cut the lines Monday, but the timing couldn't have been worse. Two weeks ago, the Colorado legislature and Gov. Bill Owens passed a law that increases the fines for anyone who cuts underground utility lines. The first fine is $5,000. A three-time offender within a 12-month period faces fines up to $75,000.

"They (workers) do the best they can as far as trying to track utilities that are already in place," said Matt Sugar, spokesman for the Metropolitan Football Stadium District. "Sometimes they just don't know the depth of things. There are a variety of reasons they might run into something."

http://realcities.yellowbrix.com/pages/realcities/Story.nsp?story_id=11068835&site=charlotte&ID=realcities&scategory=Computers%3AY2K

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), June 07, 2000


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