Severed cable leaves SLV communities without Internet

Residents of the San Lorenzo Valley were without Internet service from AT&T for nearly 24 hours after county work crews accidentally severed the primary fiber optic line to the area Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 25.
According to AT&T spokesman John Britton, the service failure left customers in the Felton, Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek areas offline until about midday Wednesday.
The line, Britton said, was severed at about 5 p.m. Tuesday as road crews, working to place a temporary road-work caution sign near the intersection of Graham Hill and Mount Hermon roads in Felton, bored through the cable.
“It was clearly an accident,” Britton said, adding that incidents of that nature are fairly common.
Crews worked through the night to excavate the area of the line break, closing a section of Graham Hill Road, before the line could be spliced back together, Britton said.
“On a situation like this, we work around the clock (to restore service),” he said. “Sometimes the trenching takes as long as anything.”
For residents, the failure was less drastic than an April 2009 incident in which vandals cut through fiber optic cables that knocked out all cell phone, Internet and phone service for an entire day in most of the Bay Area.