Phone, Internet service restored

A days-long phone and Internet outage affecting roughly 2,000 homes and businesses ended Monday, according to residents and AT&T; representatives.

“AT&T; has spliced all the cables back together and restored all service,” said company spokesman John Britton.

Phones in the Newport Center region came back on over the weekend, said Newport Beach City Councilman Keith Curry, who has an office in the area.

Curry said that last week the inability to use phones was a significant burden on at the PFM Group office where he works, with customers sometimes unaware of why they could not get through.

“It really shows you how dependent you are on your method of communication,” he said.

Construction workers for cable provider Cox Communications cut an underground AT&T; cable Wednesday, Cox spokeswoman Ayn Craciun confirmed. But Craciun said AT&T; is to blame because Cox followed state rules and asked for all cables to be marked.

“AT&T; did not mark the location of its equipment,” she said. “We had an underground service alert and performed the work in the mandated time frame.”

Britton declined to discuss the accusation in detail.

“AT&T; is focused on taking care of customers and restoring service, not on assigning blame,” he said, adding that the company would provide all necessary information to investigating agencies.

Repair crews were slowly fixing cut lines since the outage began early Wednesday. Newport Beach police could not receive non-911 calls for much of the first day, and stores throughout Fashion Island were cut off until the weekend.