PORT ANGELES — A severed fiber optic cable disrupted Internet, phone and cable TV services across the North Olympic Peninsula on Wednesday.
About 1,000 feet of cable owned by Northwest Open Access Network had to be replaced after a large truck snagged the cable at 8:15 a.m. near Bremerton, said Angela Bennink, NoaNet sales and marketing manager.
The truck dragged the cable, which was strung above a road, until it snapped, she said.
The severed cable knocked out services to tens of thousands of people in Washington and Oregon, she said.
That includes subscribers of Wave Broadband, CenturyLink and OlyPen in Clallam County, and CenturyLink customers in Jefferson County.
It was repaired at about 3 p.m., Bennink said.
Wave Broadband was the hardest hit. The company’s 14,500 Clallam County customers lost all Internet, phone and cable TV services, said Arha Peck, Wave’s chief marketing officer.
Wave has no customers in Jefferson County.
Peck said it was the worst outage in recent memory.
“You can imagine in our business that is just the worse thing,” she said. “We take every effort to prevent it.”
OlyPen customers lost only cable Internet service, which affected about 2,500 customers, said General Manager Chuck Beaudette.
Wave and OlyPen both use the NoaNet cable, but Beaudette said OlyPen has other connections for its other Internet services that allowed them to continue to operate.
Peck said Wave is looking at adding new cables to avoid a similar service disruption.
CenturyLink spokeswoman Jan Kampbell said the company’s customers lost long distance phone service.
Capacity Provisioning Inc., which runs a fiber-optic network in Port Angeles, was not affected, said Craig Johnson, vice president and managing partner.
Broadstripe, which provides Internet, cable TV and phone services to east Jefferson County, also was not affected, said Steve Jambil, system manager.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
