wiredinUSA November 2012

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MAKING THENEWS

Outages ground flights An outage that cut telephone and data services to Sprint customers in parts of California, Oregon and Washington also grounded Alaska Airlines passengers when it took the carrier’s reservations system offline.

caused by two cuts in the company’s fiber optic cable network, and service was resumed within the day. She explained that one cable was accidentally cut in the early morning, while maintenance work was being conducted on a railroad track between Chicago and Milwaukee, but the company is still investigating the cause of the second cut which occurred between Tacoma, Washington and Portland, Oregon a few hours later. Davis said that fiber cuts are typically accidental, but could not immediately confirm that this was the case for the second incident. Alaska Airlines said in a statement that it and its sister carrier Horizon Air had canceled 70 flights and that some departing flights had been up to four hours late.

Crystal Davis, a spokeswoman for Sprint Nextel Corp (SN), said the outages were

wiredInUSA - November 2012

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wiredInUSA - November 2012