Phone, Internet Service Restored In Silicon Valley

At least two separate acts of vandalism that left thousands in parts of Silicon Valley without phone, Internet or cellular service have been repaired.

AT&T confirmed through its Twitter feed that the sliced fiber optic cables are operating again and that all affected users should no longer be experiencing any problems.

The company's official news feed on Twitter sent a message saying, "CA Outage Update: Repairs to vandalized San Jose cables were completed overnight. Services are operating normally this morning."

Early Thursday morning, suspected saboteurs cut underground fiber optic cables. The damaged cables were buried 10 feet underground but were accessible through a manhole cover, The San Jose Mercury News reported. Once the fiber optic cables were cut, phone service in parts of south San Jose, Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Santa Cruz County was lost. Cables also were cut in the Peninsula community of San Carlos, where similar outages were reported.

The service outages started at about 2 a.m. Thursday morning. By 3:30 a.m., AT&T had repair crews on site. The first priority for the company was to restore the ability to make phone calls to emergency services, AT&T said.

The cut cables are owned by AT&T and have been leased to Verizon Wireless.

By 11:30 p.m. Thursday, partial service had been restored to customers in the Silicon Valley area; the remainder of repairs were completed over night.

According to Joy Alexiou, a public information officer with Santa Clara County, about 52,000 homes lost the ability to place or receive phone calls. Also affected were an unknown number of cell phone users.

Shortly after repairs on the fiber optic cables began, AT&T issued a $100,000 reward for any information that might lead to the capture of the suspected saboteurs.

Authorities did not immediately identify suspects.