January 10, 2006

Service on Sprint Nextel's network was interrupted for about three and a half hours beginning Monday afternoon, when cuts in two of the carrier's fiber lines in the Western United States caused disruptions in the company's wireless, wireline and long distance services.

The first cut happened around 3:30 p.m. EST near Reno Junction, Calif. Sprint Nextel spokesman John Taylor said the cut was caused by a rain-driven mud slide that damaged and exposed a network cable.

Taylor described the area as an isolated stretch along a railroad track near the California/Nevada border.

He said that that in order to make emergency repairs, network operations employees had to hike in to the location carrying cable and stringing it through nearby trees.

The first cut did not disrupt service, Taylor said.

When such emergency repairs are necessary, Sprint Nextel reroutes traffic through areas with excess capacity-in this case, the Phoenix area.

But while technicians began splicing the damaged cable back together, a second cut occurred in Buckeye, Ariz., about 34 miles west of Phoenix.

As of Tuesday morning, the cause of the Arizona cut was unknown, Taylor said.

But it resulted in "tremendous disruptions" for Sprint Nextel customers, Taylor said, with the bulk of the service problems in the West and scattered problems throughout the country.

Sprint Nextel's CDMA customers suffered the brunt of the wireless outages, although there were "some isolated [iDEN] outages."

Business and residential wireline services also were affected, since customers in many Western areas could not make long distance calls. However, the company said local service was not affected.

Sprint Nextel restored full service around 7 p.m. EST.

The cable near Reno Junction was spliced by around 6:30 p.m. EST and the cut near Phoenix was repaired about half an hour later, according to Sprint Nextel.

Source: RCR