This is from Michigan Tech Telcom, pretty much the same as stated above:
Off campus digital circuits unavailable »
Item Created: 08/03/2006 at 12:13 a.m. by Brenda Helminen
Last Updated: 08/03/2006 at 4:07 p.m. by Brenda Helminen
Status: Open Type: Central IT Services
Network traffic to MTU and other UP sites (NMU), some selected campus DSL service, one MTU videoconferencing circuit, and GSM cell phones from CellularOne and AllTel are reported down.
Older TDM cellphones are working. We are suspecting a fiber cut somewhere in the UP. AT&T/SBC/Sprint/ALLTel/CellularOne have been notified.
Local, long distance, and E911 telephone calls to/from campus and around the U.P. ARE functioning.
Outage began at 7:57AM Thursday, Aug 3, 2006
UPDATE as of 9:37AM: SBC has been notified by Norlight of Wisconsin that they suspect a fiber cut in their plant. No location is known yet, and we have no estimated time for repair.
UPDATE at 9:40AM: Merit has word back the break is near Coleman, WI, not ETR at this time.
UPDATE noon: Still no ETR, but we do know that there is a splice crew on site, and the construction crew has been sent home.
Update 4:05PM: The fiber cut has been repaired.
Off campus traffic is flowing. Cell service has returned.
We were out of off campus Internet access from about 8-4 and my cell phone didn't work either. Incidents like this kind of make you realize how vulnerable out communications systems could be to a well planned terrorist attack if they were to cut the right wires in the right places. Same deal for electricity. Just from two incidents with in the past few years this can be seen. The first being when a transmission line failed north of green bay, taking out 3/4ths of the UP, and then the failure in Ohio that took out parts of the LP and new york and other eastern areas. It's really amazing and kind of scary how everything is interconnected and reliant on other parts of the system and how failure in one part can take down the how thing. Anyways that's my 2 cents on the issue.