Fiberoptic
cable cut causes
telecommunications
services outage

Long-distance, pager and
Internet services were
affected for many

By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

Internet, long-distance telephone and pager services were disrupted on Oahu today when a land-based AT&T fiberoptic cable was accidentally cut.

Neal Yokoto, AT&T spokesman, said a company was doing some digging in the Pearl City area and cut the cable at about 9 a.m.

He said AT&T immediately dispatched technicians and some service was restored about 1 p.m. He couldn't say how long it would take to restore full capacity but long-distance calls were resuming.

The cable accident knocked out part of GTE Hawaiian Tel's pager network for about three hours and caused an overflow of long-distance calls on its circuits, said Keith Kamisugi, Hawaiian Tel spokesman.

"Too many calls were coming in at the same time ."

Yuka Nagashima, president of LavaNet Internet Access, said GTE reported a router problem was affecting service. Another backbone internet provider to LavaNet also was down, she said.

She said other internet service providers were experiencing problems and they appeared to be island-wide.

Yokoto said it wasn't known yet how many customers were affected.

Nagashima said LavaNet's internal system was working and it was informing customers of the situation by email. People connected to La vaNet also could get services on this island, she said. "We're updating our web page as we learn more."

Holly Huber, web programmer at Island Infotech, said she was receiving email from people on the mainland and accessing websites hosted locally.

But anyone on the mainland trying to access Island Infotech's Honolulu Marathon website, for example, couldn't get to it, she said.