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Verizon Wireless working in bay area but still out for customers spanning Sarasota, Orlando

 
Published Jan. 17, 2014

While cell phone service returned to Verizon users in the bay area after an outage Friday afternoon, some customers throughout Central Florida were still without service.

The outage, which affected cell phone, data and text service for some customers, occurred because of damage to Florida Power and Light's network, which serves Verizon, according to Verizon Wireless spokesman Chuck Hamby.

"Our network is fine," he said.

Two cables, one aerial cable in Sarasota and another underground cable in Orlando, were damaged by companies working near Florida Power and Light's FiberNet facility, said FPL FibertNet spokeswoman April Reynolds. Customers around and between those two areas could be affected.

FPL FiberNet was working with construction companies and splicing crews to fix the lines Friday afternoon. Service was expected to be restored by 7 to 9 p.m.

"As soon as one of the two locations is repaired, traffic should come back up for our customers," Reynolds said.

Usually if one line is damaged, traffic is rerouted, she said. Since both lines were down at the same time, traffic could not be rerouted, causing an outage.

Colleen Wright can be reached at cwright@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8313. You can follow her on Twitter @Colleen_Wright.