[1st-mile-nm] Thurs. Fiber cut in Santa Fe

[Richard Lowenberg]

Making the case for fiber redundancy.    rl
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>From the Albuquerque Journal
Friday, April 25, 2008

Phone, Cell, Internet Service Interrupted

By
Journal Staff Report
    A crew working on state government's Rail Runner commuter train cut a
fiber-optic cable in Santa Fe Thursday, jamming telephone lines, cutting off
Internet and cell phone service and causing other problems over much of
northern New Mexico outside the capital city.
    At least a few businesses in Taos shut down because of the service outages
and some stores and restaurants there couldn't take debit or credit cards
because card readers are reliant on phone lines.
    The problems apparently were minor around Santa Fe, although there were
some? the ATM at a Wells Fargo branch on St. Michael's was down because of
the cut cable, the staff there said.
    The service problems apparently extended to Red River, Angel Fire, Raton and
Las Vegas, N.M., as well.
    S.U. Mahesh, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said a
crew working for Rail Runner contractors hit the Qwest line while digging near
San Mateo Road.
    "Our engineers are looking into it to determine if they marked (the cable
location) wrong or what happened there," Mahesh said.
    The Rail Runner extension into Santa Fe will follow the route of existing
railroad tracks through town, including across the San Mateo-Second Street
roadway, but improvements are being made to the tracks to make way for the
commuter train. The Rail Runner now runs from Belen to Bernalillo through
Albuquerque and is expected to begin service to Santa Fe by late this year.
    Mahesh said the DOT and its contractors? the Twin Mountain and Herzog
construction firms? are "aware there are lot of utility lines running through
the city and we'll take a closer look to make sure this doesn't happen again."
    "We'd like apologize for any inconvenience caused by this," Mahesh said. "We
are investigating how it happened."
    "We understand this is a great inconvenience but we're working to make sure
it get fixed," he added.
    Qwest termed the problems caused by the severed cable "congestion" as
opposed to an outright outage, meaning that callers at least theoretically
could get through if they tried several times.
    "People can complete calls but they need to dial a couple of times," said
Qwest spokesman Gary Younger.
    The line was cut early or midmorning, and service was being restored in some
of the affected areas by 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. Thursday.
    In Taos, some residents could make local calls during the day but not call
outside the Taos area. Cell phone service was also out most of the day.
    Peoples Bank in Albertson's Supermarket was closed due to the inoperable
phone lines. The post office branch in the store remained open, but was not
able to take customers' credit or debit cards.
    A manager with Smith's Food and Drug Center said the store was able to
conduct business uninterrupted because its Internet lines required for credit
and debit card use were on a satellite feed. Carole Grant, a manager at
Albertsons, said that store's lines were also usable.
    She said the biggest problem was that the store couldn't cash customers'
checks because the bank was closed and that they had to let some employees
leave to pick up children in day care because there was no way to get through
to the day care centers by phone.
    A supervisor at the Taos Zianet Internet provider said he had had many calls
from customers who couldn't log onto the Web.
    "Zianet's service was fine, but the customers using Qwest land or DSL lines
couldn't get through to us in order to log on," he said.
    The outage had little affect on local police operations, Taos Police Chief
Daron Syling said.
    "Our 911 lines are on a different system than the town of Taos' phone lines,
and the 911 lines weren't affected at all," he said. "But telephone service was
affected randomly throughout the town," he said.


-- 
Richard Lowenberg
1st-Mile Institute
P.O. Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
505-989-9110;   505-603-5200 cell
rl at 1st-mile.com  www.1st-mile.com

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