Verizon service restored after fiber line cut impacted service in New Mexico
Verizon wireless service was restored Wednesday afternoon after a widespread outage disrupted calls, texts, and critical systems across New Mexico earlier in the day.
KOAT could hear Bernalillo County dispatchers reporting issues with their computer-aided dispatch system on Wednesday morning through the website Broadcastify.
“We’re having some issues with the CAD,” one dispatcher said.
Another dispatcher asked, “Are you guys showing your Verizon connection down, county one?”
“That’s affirmative,” came the response.
The outage quickly spread across the state, with reports coming in from Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Grants, Gallup, and Los Lunas. Many people called KOAT seeking answers.
According to DownDetector, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Rio Rancho, and Farmington were among the cities reporting the most issues nationwide.
Verizon attributed the disruption to fiber line damage. In a statement, the company said, “Multiple fiber cuts caused a service interruption for some wireless customers in the Albuquerque, New Mexico area earlier today.”
The company added, “Engineers were able to resolve the issue and service was fully restored by 3:55 PM MT. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience.”
The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the brief connectivity issues with its CAD systems, and some cell phone interruptions.
New Mexico State Police officials said they were affected for an hour and a half on some of their work phones.
The Rio Rancho Police Department told KOAT it does not use Verizon, and was not impacted at all.
One customer shared their experience during the outage: “I didn’t even realize that there was an outage until I was pumping my gas and I wanted to compare prices with the Costco and the Smiths. And when I went to look at my phone, it had an SOS on it and a little satellite bar. And of course, my first thought was that it was user error and that I did something wrong to my phone. So I checked to make sure that I had a satellite signal and I did not.”
The New Mexico outage comes just days after a similar disruption in Southern California. Verizon said vandals cut multiple fiber cables there on Sunday and announced a $25,000 reward for information about a suspect.
KOAT asked Verizon where the fiber lines were cut, and by who. We did not immediately hear a response.
