HONOLULU — A Hawaiian Telcom crew completed repairs to a burned fiber optic cable and restored service to all affected areas on O‘ahu and Kaua‘i late Tuesday night. The repairs were finished at around 11:50 p.m. Tuesday night, according to
HONOLULU — A Hawaiian Telcom crew completed repairs to a burned fiber optic cable and restored service to all affected areas on O‘ahu and Kaua‘i late Tuesday night.
The repairs were finished at around 11:50 p.m. Tuesday night, according to a Hawaiian Telcom news release.
The cable was reportedly damaged by an early-morning fire beneath the airport viaduct on the H-1 Freeway.
“The company restored service to all affected customers over the course of the day and evening through a combination of re-routing network traffic and repairing the burned cable,” according to Senior Manager Ann Nishida-Fry of Hawaiian Telcom Corporate Communications.
Workers continued to verify resolution of all affected services and field customer inquiries overnight, Nishida Fry added. Hawaiian Telcom estimates about 10,000 customers were impacted by the fire and resulting cable damage.
Service on Kaua‘i was interrupted for some — but not all — Hawaiian Telcom customers along with other third-party carriers that utilized the same burned cable. Businesses and government offices reported to be impacted include the Kaua‘i Police Department and county offices.
According to County of Kaua‘i spokeswoman Sarah Blane, the entire county phone system appeared to have intermittent problems with both incoming and outgoing calls throughout the day.
“Our IT team worked diligently with representatives from Hawaiian Telcom to resolve the issue in as timely a manner as possible,” Blane said. “The situation improved throughout the day with most of the kinks worked out by 6 p.m. The system was fully operational by about 10 p.m.”
The issue did not impact the county’s 911 line, however, Blane said there were disruptions to the non-emergency Police Dispatch line. The IT team and dispatchers were able to identify the problem and get a notice out requesting that the public reserve 911 calls for emergencies only.
“Our community was very respectful of that request and seemed to understand that we were dealing with an incident beyond our control,” Blane said. “As a result, there were no major incidents or disruptions to our emergency response yesterday.”
• Tom LaVenture, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or tlaventure@thegardenisland.com.
