Sprint goes down across the West Coast due to fiber-optics cut

Sprint Nextel just had a doozy of an outage out West, affecting their wireless, long-distance, and internet customers. Turns out a fiber-optic cable was cut near Phoenix, which did double damage since there were network repairs ongoing in Reno that had them routing all the regional data through Pheonix. They say they're dropping the maintenance in Reno for now so they can get online as soon as possible, but there still isn't an estimated time of when they'll get service going again. Let us know if you've been hit by this, and if you're back online yet, though of course you probably won't be reading this if you have been affected. So call before you dig, and pray for your unfortunate Sprint-served brethren in the West that they might know the ping, and that the ping would set them free.

[Michael Honore @ Jan 9th 2006 8:34PM]

Thats amazing how one wire can take down so much. Thats something they should fix.

[sr @ Jan 9th 2006 8:43PM]

What do you expect from Sprint? The absolute worst cellular carrier in existence anywhere in the world.

[Ben Mason @ Jan 9th 2006 8:45PM]

The company I work for has a customer we with a few locations that were effected, we were seeing 200+ ms ping times across Sprint's own backbone, it was pretty sweet, especally since there a bunch of other un related fires with the same customer today.

[andrew @ Jan 9th 2006 8:46PM]

My sprint service went out around 11am PST, power vision never went down though. My service returned at about 4pm PST. A few other Sprint users in my office are having the same issue. I emailed Sprint eCare after about 2 hours of no service, but they never got back to me.



My lunchtime family calls were foiled today! So I watched ESPN on powervision.

[Ken S @ Jan 9th 2006 8:46PM]

Aha! So *that*'s why service was down this afternoon in San Francisco. Heck, first you folks come through with all the news and realtime CES keynote reports and now you're doing near-realtime network status reporting? What's next? Live traffic info? Streaming video download? Web search?

[R. Johnson @ Jan 9th 2006 8:48PM]

yah, this afternoon i couldnt send any sms messages, and i had perfect reception, so i was thinking their network was down. o well, i hop its up by tommorow though

[Shawn @ Jan 9th 2006 8:56PM]

We felt the effect for many hours in Kentucky (near louisville), and my gf didn't have service for 3 hours in Virginia.

[Ryan J. @ Jan 9th 2006 8:58PM]

My wife and I noticed that our Milwaukee, Wisconsin Sprint service was down at about 2:30 PM CST; it went back up at about 5:30 PM CST.

[Jason @ Jan 9th 2006 9:01PM]

My whole family is on Sprint (four phones, mom, grandma, dad, and dad's work phone) and they all went down. They are back up now, so I'm assuming at least Las Vegas is okay. The good news is I'm on Cingular so I didn't notice a thing. =)

[Joseph Baker @ Jan 9th 2006 9:02PM]

My service in Philadelphia, Pa, went down around 12:30pm, powervisionEVDO stayed up, smsvoice1xrtt services remained unavailable. Services here in philly came back online around 7:30pm.

[JJ @ Jan 9th 2006 9:03PM]

Service to my wife's Sprint phone is down here in Texas, and has been since 4:30 pm CST (at least - but SMS was still going through). While we live in Austin, she still has an El Paso number from our days there. Austin is pretty close to Phoenix - I mean it is a 6 hour drive but it is close as far as close is in the southwest.

[Nocturnal @ Jan 9th 2006 9:23PM]

No wonder when attempting to make phone calls it would just die out.

[Invisible Man @ Jan 9th 2006 9:26PM]

The line cut took out our 1-800 service for our company.

[tomo_kun @ Jan 9th 2006 9:41PM]

"8. My wife and I noticed that our Milwaukee, Wisconsin Sprint service was down at about 2:30 PM CST; it went back up at about 5:30 PM CST."



It was down for quite a bit of the day. I dont have sprint, but those of us at local HS noticed that their sprint phones where dead for the majority of the day while we didnt have our exams. It was out at the end of the day as well.



I wonder if thats truly what effected WI sprint users.

[Tommer @ Jan 9th 2006 9:49PM]

42 SONET rings went out between LA and Las Vegas. Someone dug up the fiber lines.. opps... sounds a like backhoe disease! As of 4:30, there were about 20 more rings to bring back up, but I think they are back online now.



cheers

[Joe M. @ Jan 9th 2006 9:55PM]

I was affected by this. It was awesome. My work uses VoIP distribution for calls, and no calls came in.



Thanks sprint for the available time. :)

[DN @ Jan 9th 2006 9:57PM]

I have both nextel and sprint and they were both effected, no domestic Ld and no international LD, no data services and no direct connect on the Nextel

[Ryan Carter @ Jan 9th 2006 10:01PM]

Wow, the ping thing is the funniest I have heard all day. That really bites. I hope Sprint can sort it out right quick.

[Mini2Go @ Jan 9th 2006 10:02PM]

Coincidence or relation: I couldn't make a call from Pittsburgh today on a Nextel from 5:00pm until after 5:30pm? (I didn't use the cell between noon and 5, so it could have been out earlier.) All lines were busy. I figured they had lost a local tower or something. Maybe there was some relation? Crazy.

[Ken @ Jan 9th 2006 10:05PM]

Sprint cellular is back online in Westwood, CA.

[Martin W @ Jan 9th 2006 10:08PM]

According to CNET, the first line was down because of a washout: "much of the traffic running on the Phoenix/Palm Springs link already had been rerouted from a link outside Reno, Nev. Heavy rains in the area had caused what technicians refer to as a "washout." To repair the fiber, the company had to cut it and shift traffic from Reno to the Phoenix link while they repaired the fiber."



I don't think it's fair to say that Sprint is a shitty carrier based on such a story. I bet any carrier could suffer same level of outage with two strategically placed fiber cuts such as these ones.

[daev @ Jan 9th 2006 10:13PM]

"Austin is pretty close to Phoenix - I mean it is a 6 hour drive but it is close as far as close is in the southwest."



Pretty amazing, considering it takes me 11 hours to get to New Mexico from Dallas (which is 4-5 hours north of Austin)

[Ian Argent @ Jan 9th 2006 10:21PM]

Please note - this was almost certainly NOT sprint's fault (and that it affected more than just Sprint from the noise I've been hearing in various places). Bad luck that they had maintenance going when the link got cut, but nothing they had control over. I will say that it sucks to be whoever cut the lines - I just hope that AZ has a good unemployment insurance package; they're going to need it!

[low fi @ Jan 9th 2006 10:24PM]

I ran into this all afternoon, using my business cellphone to call from Chicago to the West Coast. I'd get maybe a couple of rings, followed by a vague message about being unable to place the call and to try back later.



Called customer service and they had no clue, after 10 minutes on hold, they bounced me around to business support and tech support without any clue about the outage.



This has been typical of my experience with Sprint. A plethora of problems, terrible service, and even worse support. I can't wait for the end of our business contrract!

[Phillip @ Jan 9th 2006 10:29PM]

Experienced some Downtime for a couple of hours arround lunch in nashville tn. When calling a sprint phone from a landline there was over a 1 minute delay before the call was connected if at all.

[Rishabh Kumar @ Jan 9th 2006 10:38PM]

my friend's phone died today around 2:30pm PST (at least that's when he noticed)...all was fine around 5pm though. I have a T-Mobile Sidekick...so yeah

[rothgar @ Jan 9th 2006 10:50PM]

Is there any site that keeps up to date information about networks? Verizon had some outtage last week in the LA area and it is really annoying to find out by not being able to make a call.

[Emberline @ Jan 9th 2006 11:25PM]

My Sprint phone and several friends' Sprint phones wouldn't work roughly between 430 and 630 today. Weird thing is we're in Philly. Coincidence?

[MHZmaster @ Jan 9th 2006 11:37PM]

That's interesting. Some of my friends on Sprint had an outage on Friday (Jan. 6) about 3pm PST. They couldn't place or recieve any calls and callers got a friendly "call could not be completed as dialed" message. This was in Marin County (Just north of San Francisco).



Is this a coincidence or is there something up with the Sprint network? I wonder.

[maokh @ Jan 9th 2006 11:46PM]

A whole bunch of us subscribe to SprintPCS in the Seattle area, and we were unable to make calls to one another within the area -- this was not affecting just long distance calls. This is great for some of us who have..dare i say.."cut the cord".



It disrupted business and caused all sorts of funny personal situations today. I am certain some of us have completely written off today, as we depend so much (maybe a little too much) on mobile telecommunications.

[trunksy @ Jan 10th 2006 12:05AM]

I'm in Los Angeles. The office I work at has 4 T-1's. 2 going to the DC area, 1 going to MD and 1 going up to northern CA. Only the two going to the DC failed. So we were at half capacity for a few hours but luckily the one going out to MD and north California stayed up, however hindered. Shouldn't SONET lines have more protection? I say Titanium or something!

[bobcat @ Jan 10th 2006 12:15AM]

No issues up in WA had phone and internet.

[litch @ Jan 10th 2006 12:17AM]

I've had sprint cell service for years and generally been satisfied. But the part I really object to is that we noticed the problem around 3 CST here in Austin, and there was NOTHING on the sprint website or anywhere explaining that there even was a problem for hours. We couldn't get hold of anyone at sprint to find out.

[Typhoon @ Jan 10th 2006 1:08AM]

Sprint, is GHETTO!!! The absolutely worst cellphone company in the world. Fiber optics down or not, this company BLOWS! I have friends that have this horrendous service, and I kid you not, the calls between us during a normal, 10 minute conversation get dropped on an average of 7 to 12 times...EVERY SINGLE TIME I SPOKE WITH THEM! It is so bad that I refuse to talk with them now unless they call me from a landline. I told them to get T-Mobile, which I have, or even Verizon which I despise as a company. But at least they have excellent cellphone reception. It's more than I can say for GIMP, or uh, I mean Sprint.

[James Rainey @ Jan 10th 2006 1:11AM]

Ask yourself this.. if two outages occurred for AT&T would they have been down... NOPE.



After researching we learned that AT&T can re-route in milli-seconds through more than 25 routes.. that's redundancy. That's the old Ma' Bell for ya'. Sprint thought that a single layer was enough. Wonder how many win-back calls AT&T will get tomorrow?





P.S. If you think Worldcomm is much better, they have five possible routes. Level3, uh, 2.

[Jordan @ Jan 10th 2006 1:16AM]

This happened to Cingular locally here in Michigan about a year ago. Supposedly a train derailment (which DID happen) somehow knocked out the fiber. They were out for a little over 24 hours.



That was a few counties though, half the country is a little different!



I let all my friends use my Verizon phone.. ;)

[R @ Jan 10th 2006 1:17AM]

Post 34, than explain the AT&T frame relay meltdown of 2001...

[db76scout @ Jan 10th 2006 2:30AM]

I live in Dallas, Texas and my phone couldn't recieve calls this morning.

[tiuk @ Jan 10th 2006 2:32AM]

Only thing I noticed out of the ordinary was that a couple of my usual game servers were down, must be located in the affected area.

[Simon Waddington @ Jan 10th 2006 5:06AM]

And I thought the Internet was supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear war? Now we find its put out by a simple backhoe - what the dickens would those eggheads at DARPA say about that?

[Z @ Jan 10th 2006 5:44AM]

Someone's going to get fired for this "little" mishap.

[CirclesCenter @ Jan 10th 2006 7:25AM]

Well that makes me laugh. My buddy just traded in his "crappy" verizon phone for a sprint (cause of their network coverage, HAHAHAHAHAHA I guess they're second only to T-mobile AHAHA)



Anyways he bought that crap tastic RAZR wannabe samsung (No expandable memory. AHAHAA) And a whopping 1.3 mpix.



Anyways, now that I think about it he hasn't called me today. Could someone make sure this isn't temporary?

[David @ Jan 10th 2006 10:10AM]

I have Sprint service on my Treo 650 and internet & voice were down completely for about an hour yesterday despite four bars of reception. I live in Colorado Springs...

[Preston Wily @ Jan 10th 2006 10:28AM]

My service went down here in Utah for about two hours yesterday but it's back up now. We went into the sprint store and it was flooded with upset people.

[Guse @ Jan 10th 2006 10:32AM]

My friend informed me of this issues around 5pm CST yesterday. He said his girlfriend called him around 3pm CST and got some other guy. So he called his cell from his work line and got the same dude. calls were being routed, but not to the correct number. Was working again around 6 pm CST. This was in South Central MN.

[D @ Jan 10th 2006 10:32AM]

you guys are ridiculous if you think any carrier is immune to big fiber cuts? i work for a t1 provider, and this shit happens with EVERY single one of them out there. its actually been a while since sprint was so affected. also, whoever the clown was that said that Sprint had no redundancy, ehhhh, its just that with every company, there are those occasional combination of forces that turn out to be VERY VERY bad luck. i personally like sprint service and enjoy my ev-do speeds, so its cool, change networks so more of the bandwidth is available tooooo meee....



suckas, do you think this is the first time this has happened....this happens ALL the time, just redundancy keeps everyone happy and online.



p'z

[WhyNot @ Jan 10th 2006 10:57AM]

To post 2 "What do you expect from Sprint? The absolute worst cellular carrier in existence anywhere in the world."



Personally I thought that AT&T and Verizon, in that order are the worst. I actually switched from Sprint to AT&T and then to Verizon in the course of a week before going back to Sprint. The reason? More dropped calls by either other carrier in about 3 days each than with Sprint in 5 years. Many dead spots and I'm in Southern CA. Hell, when I lived in the middle of the woods in CT I had fewer dead spots with Sprint. After the week without Sprint, I pretty much called them back and apologized for doubting them. They not only re-ported my number back over to them, continued my service without showing me as a 'new' customer' and gave me tons of minutes and an earlier calling time for no additional charge.



As for the interuption this article is about, I haven't seen any. Full bars and have sent a couple text messages today.

[Freak @ Jan 10th 2006 11:22AM]

"There website wasn't updated for hours"

"The person at the store couldn't tell me anything"

"I called in and they couldn't tell me anything, they didn't even know anything about!"



I swear you people have way too much time on your hands, all you do is wine about everything.

It takes time to figure out what's going on. The company isn't gunna known instantaneously when a line goes out. Or if they do, they arne't going to know why it went out. So ofcourse until they figure out why it went out they aren't going to tell you what's up.



As for people crying because they didn't have cell service for a coupel of hours. Deal with it! look at your contract, they take no responsibility for your lost productivity. This is something you should read, because its something you've agreed to.



As for Customer Service Reps not knowing anything, The call centre get bombarded with calls when stuff like this happens, they are busy just trying to handle the call volume. Once the network site is updated with a status, then they will be able to tell you something. Other than that, it is out of their control, so they will simply forward you to tech support if they don't have info on the outage.



I used to work in a call centre for one of the major american cell networks. The funniest (yet stupidest) is when people call in immediately after a hurrican and cry about not being able to get service. As much as I say "There is no such thing as a stupid question" there sure are a hell of alot of stupid people out there. "My phone doesn't work!" 'Excuse me sir, have you looked outside? cause i'm pretty sure you just got hit with a category 4. Look around for a cell tower, and when you find one, let me know and i'll help you from there.'



So baaaasicly. Read the contract. They tell you excatly what to expect.. haha oh.. the best is when people threaten to sue and you read them the line in the contract that informs them that should they take legal action, they can only sue for a maximum amount of $200 hahaha

[Russ Smith @ Jan 10th 2006 1:10PM]

Huge indeed, here at the DirecTV NOC, we lost 9 markets totally. Same for Echostar. Once ATM rerouting started, the load was too much.

[Kim @ Jan 10th 2006 1:42PM]

That really kind of sucked. I don't have a landline, and I had a phone interview at 1pm PST. I was unable to make phone calls until about 130PST.