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9-1-1 Outages Plague Southern Ohio


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Thousands were without power as internet, cable and phone provider Frontier Communications experienced service outages in southern Ohio on Sunday morning. Frontier Communications is still investigating the outages, though the issue has largely been resolved.

The areas affected were Pickaway, Vinton and Jackson counties with no other reported disruptions. 9-1-1 emergency services were the most affected, though some long distance lines in Oak Hill were also knocked out.

Frontier Communication's General Manager of Southern Ohio Dave George said that the lines in Jackson were out largely because Jackson and Vinton operate together on the same 9-1-1 system. It was therefore no surprise that when Vinton county's lines went down Jackson's lines naturally went with them.

All throughout Sunday morning, afternoon and evening the 9-1-1 services in these areas were crippled dramatically. Frontier Communications set restoring these critical lines as their top priority, as missing a 9-1-1 call might mean the possible injury or death of the caller.

Fortunately, George said that the main problem with the 9-1-1 lines is now fixed, though there is still more Frontier must do before the situation is completely settled.

"We were able to reroute the 9-1-1 traffic onto different pathways to get the 9-1-1 services back up and operational; for the long distance [lines] we were also able to get those services restored," said George.

Frontier still has not determined what the cause of the outages was, partially because the lines that were knocked out also operated in ATT and Chillicothe Telephone (Horizon Telecom) territories.

According to George, Frontier Communications hopes to figure out the cause of the problem as soon as possible by actively troubleshooting with ATT and Horizon Telecom. Cooperation between the companies is paramount due to the overlapping cable lines blurring out the identity of the true culprit in the case of the telephone outage.

"Whether it's in frontier territory or ATT territory or Horizon Telecom we'll work cooperatively with those other companies to ensure that whatever caused this service disruption will not be the cause of another service disruption," said George.

George claims that as of now all services seem to have been restored, though some long distance lines are still in questionable condition.