The area experienced another telecommunications outage on Thursday, July 23, with the effects of a fiber cut in La Plata County stretching from Bayfield to the Pagosa Springs area.
During the outage, Archuleta County Broadband Services Management Office Technical Manager Eric Hittle indicated the outages occurred at about 10:30 a.m. on July 23 and were determined to be caused by a cut to a Lumen-owned line that stemmed from a mislocate on the line for the placement of a new electric pole.
According to the office, this fiber link handles most of the broadband services in Archuleta County, as well as cellular tower backhaul services.
Services were restored at about 8 p.m. that evening.
According to Hittle, Bayfield was partially affected, mostly its DSL and some cell towers, while pretty much all of Archuleta County’s and Pagosa Springs’ services were affected.
“This included full internet outage of Lumen DSL, Zito Internet and phones, Lumen land line communications (outside of 911), Archuleta County Dispatch 911 services, all cellular towers for every cellular carrier,” Hittle wrote in an email to The SUN. “Visionary was degraded, but still somewhat functional, since they have their microwave own backhaul, but it becomes instantly overloaded when it’s exclusively used.”
He adds, “Clearnetworx in Bayfield and Pagosa was not affected by this outage as one of their Lumen circuits terminates at Bayfield, and then connects to their own separate fiber to Durango, so was unaffected by the cut that occurred beyond Bayfield, even though their other circuit was affected.”
Hittle indicates Clearnetworx not being affected is an indication of the impact the area’s redundant loop will have on services.
“This demonstrates the lessened impact of a cut once the new fiber line is ready for use later this year,” he states. “Most of the ISPs will likely add that new link to their uplink paths so they can automatically route to one or the other, so as long as both fibers aren’t cut at the same time (which is extremely unlikely) most people won’t even notice. Both uplinks will have adequate capacity to handle all current and future traffic for quite some time. Hopefully cellular services will also take advantage of the new alternative backhaul.”
During the outage, Hittle estimated that by September the rest of the redundant loop should be fully connected in the Durango area and the equipment to operate it should be installed.
randi@pagosasun.com
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