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Phone line outage affects Nez Perce County offices [Lewiston Tribune, Idaho :: ]
[July 26, 2014]

Phone line outage affects Nez Perce County offices [Lewiston Tribune, Idaho :: ]


(Lewiston Morning Tribune (ID) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) July 26--Residents trying to call Nez Perce County Friday morning were greeted by an automated voice saying their calls were unable to be completed.

That's because Nez Perce County administrative offices experienced phone line outages from around 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., according to Nez Perce County Information Services Director Randy Buttenhoff.

The county contracts for telecommunications services through XO Communications, and Buttenhoff said all county offices were affected. Inbound and outbound calls were disabled, though internal communications were still operational.

Nez Perce County Sheriff's Office dispatch supervisor Kerry Reagan said the county's emergency services and 911 phone lines are through CenturyLink and were not affected.



Buttenhoff could not say what the exact cause of the outage was or how widespread it became, but said XO indicated the problem cut phones to more than just Nez Perce County offices. He said the company fixed it by "resetting something on their end." XO Communications Director of Media and Analyst Relations David Farmer said he had no information on the exact number of customers without normal operations during the outage or the cause of the problem. He called the incident "a brief outage that affected a small amount of customers." This is the second XO Communications outage in a nine-day period in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley. A dump truck inadvertently snagged fiber-optic cables July 16, cutting off phone and Internet service to customers of XO Communications including the Lewiston Tribune, Tri-State Memorial Hospital and Clearwater Paper. It also disrupted Inland Cellular phone and data service for several hours.

Moroney may be contacted at [email protected] or (208) 848-2266.


___ (c)2014 the Lewiston Tribune (Lewiston, Idaho) Visit the Lewiston Tribune (Lewiston, Idaho) at www.lmtribune.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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