Now it makes sense - we were missing the fiber route along US HWY 89. We have data on their nation wide OC-192 network and metro fiber, but figured there was something we were missing. Also explains why other providers were not affected - it must be a unique right of way. Appreciate the help. sean ----- Original Message ----- From: "Aaron D. Gifford" <agifford@infowest.com> Date: Friday, May 21, 2004 3:39 pm Subject: Re: Qwest Utah fiber cut

sgorman1@gmu.edu wrote:

...

I was hoping someone might be able to shed some light on the

Utah cut.

...

The news report said that the cut happened near Monroe Utah,

which is several miles off of I 70. Yet the cities that were reported effected included St. George, Cedar City, and Salt Lake, which all are adjacent to I 15.

...

The puzzling part is that in our "best effort" database Qwest

does not have long haul fiber running down I 70, but it does have a lot of fiber running down I 15. There is Qwest fiber on I 15, all the cities affected are on I 15 yet the reported cut was near Monroe off of I 70.

...

I'm not familiar with Utah geogrpahy and this comes simply from

looking at our maps. Just trying to sort out the seeming discrepency. Any insight?

...

<<snip>>

According to this map at http://atlas.utah.gov/staticmapbin/urta_network.gif the Qwest fiber in question runs southward along I-15 from Salt Lake City, through Utah Valley (Provo, Utah, etc.) to Nephi, Utah, then turns eastward away from the I-15 corridor until it reaches highway 89, which it follows southward parallel to I-15 but one mountain range to the east. It continues southward along 89 until I-17, then follows I-70 until it ends where it meets I-15, where the fiber continues southward along I- 15 to St. George, Utah (where I'm at), the end-of-the-one-lane-dead-end road. This route would be consistent with the news reports saying the cut was near Monroe, Utah or near Richfield, Utah.

Such a route would agree with the telecommunication territories as mapped out at http://atlas.utah.gov/telcom/viewer.htm which shows Qwest territories along I-15 except for the central Utah areas where Qwest's fiber follows highway 89 (which area IS a Qwest territory).

While the news articles only mention that cellular, long distance, 911, and internet services were affected but local calling was not, this is not entirely true. As one affected by the cut, I can attest that the resulting additional load on the local switches (perhaps as people were calling each other to find out what was happening -- I don't know) made many phones utterly useless, including my own.

A similar cut happened some years go around Springville, Utah. I had thought that Quest had since worked with local public safety folks to set up emergency 911 services that rely on the fiber to automatically fall-over to Qwest's older and lower bandwidth microwave network. Apparently that plan fell by the wayside, or else I misheard it in the first place.

Local area public safety personnel resorted to using the Emergency Broadcast System over radio (television translators were also affected as many of them receive their video feeds over that same fiber) to tell citizens the direct-dial numbers, and in cases (like my home phone) where the phone system wasn't working at all (probably due to overload), local public safety folks told people to go to their nearest fire station for emergency help.

Messages over local radio indicated that the outage not only affected southwestern Utah counties (almost 1/3 of the state by area), but Lincoln County, Nevada, and Mohave and Coconino Counties in Arizona (north of the Grand Canyon). I don't know how accurate that message was.

Aaron out.