BOISE, Idaho — Some 10,000 Sparklight (formerly Cable One) cable television, Internet and phone subscribers in the Boise area were without service Thursday morning, after a fiber-optic overhead line was severed.
The line is located along Federal Way in southeast Boise. “About 3:49 this morning, something taller than 21-feet high –- we don’t quite know what it was yet –- snagged about one-mile of overhead fiber line,” said Boise Sparklight office General Manager Celynda Roach.
Repair crews have been on the scene since about 4:30 a.m. working to restore the lines. “Since the optic lines are about the size of a human hair, (the repair process) is very intricate –- and is similar, in many respects, to conducting brain surgery,” Roach explained.
Customer service reps in the Boise office have been fielding phone calls all morning from concerned customers. Even Roach is helping to answer the phones.
A posting on Sparklight’s Facebook page stated in part, “Our technicians are working diligently to repair and restore services as quickly as possible. We anticipate this issue may take several hours to resolve. We will provide updates as we receive them …”
All services are expected to be restored by Thursday afternoon.
Officials are still trying to find out exactly what caused the outage.
