CenturyTel says their ‘system stabilized’

By Karen Francis
Staff writer

GALLUP — CenturyTel, the phone service company for most of the area south of Gallup including Breadsprings, Ramah, Pine Hill and Zuni areas, told the state’s Public Regulation Commission that the system was stabilized on Feb. 23 and “we have not had any problems since.”

According to PRC public information officer Paul Carbajal, a CenturyTel spokesman told the PRC, “When CenturyTel is made aware of a servicing issue impacting 911 services, local police and fire departments are notified. It is my understanding this measure was taken Monday morning and local police were on site as CenturyTel technicians diligently worked to restore service. Because the community was isolated, calls could not be made outside of the area to other police departments.”

On the night of Feb. 19, two days after the phone service reportedly went out, the dispatch at Crownpoint Police District, which serves parts of the area that was affected, told the Independent that she was not made aware of the phone service outage.

CenturyTel also told the PRC that the service interruption was caused by the timing clock and the replacement had to be brought in from Pagosa Springs, Colo.

A letter to Independent Publisher Bob Zollinger from Lynda McMahan, quality assurance analyst for CenturyTel, stated that the company became aware of the issue on Sunday evening, or Feb. 17, and technicians worked Sunday night and through the day on Monday to isolate the problem.

The letter further stated, “Various alternatives were considered during the day on Monday, but the ultimate decision was that the surest way to repair the issue was to replace the network timing clock.”

McMahan stated that while replacing the timing clock addressed part of the issue, the company still had to reconfigure the part to work within the local network.

“The process took several days to complete and, as you have noted, we continued to experience intermitted service outages while this reconfiguration was completed,” she wrote.