A power failure in Orange County, Calif., disrupted digital phone service for more than 12 hours yesterday for 65,000 Oceanic Time Warner Cable customers in Hawaii.

The intermittent outage left Kalihi resident Stephen McMahon, a digital phone customer since July 26, without the long-distance calling vital to his job at Houston-based Delaney Software Services, in which he telecommutes.

“;I only noticed it this morning because I use that for even international calls,”; said McMahon, who opted not to get international calling on his cell phone since it is one of his land-line features. “;I needed to make a phone call this morning - an important one too - and I couldn't.”;

Kaneohe resident Lisa Hoang was able to make some calls yesterday on the digital line she signed up for in May, though the service periodically crashed throughout the day.

“;To be honest I mostly use my cell phone,”; she said. “;The AT&T outage last week was way worse for me.”;

Oceanic phone service was intermittently down statewide since 10:15 p.m. on Tuesday and wasn't restored until just before noon yesterday, according to Alan Pollock, vice president of marketing. The company's phone switch and equipment that supports the Hawaii network is housed in California.

The California power failure was fixed and some systems were restored Tuesday night, but the failure burned out other equipment and caused residual problems, which also affected California residents, though Oceanic didn't know the extent of the problem yesterday.

The company intends to refund customers after assessing the impact to its subscriber base, Pollock said.

“;Once we get things restored we're going to evaluate how many people were affected and how long,”; he said yesterday morning. “;Some people may be affected more than others.”;