Phone Service Restored at Urbana City Building; Other Outages Remain As AT&T Works To Restore Service

Telephone service to the Urbana City Building was fully restored about 9:45 a.m. today (July 18), as AT&T crews worked around the clock to splice together thousands of copper lines that were accidentally severed Friday afternoon by a city contractor.

The accident has left a significant number of land-line customers in Urbana without service and full restoration of service might take as long as Friday. AT&T has had crews of eight working on splicing together the copper lines, working 24 hours a day, since this weekend.

Five cables, each containing 2,400 pairs of lines, were damaged in the accident, two of them completely severed.

The incident occurred early Friday afternoon, when a city contractor was installing a new street light and damaged a large AT&T phone duct that had multiple cables in it, according to John Collins, Public Works operation manager.

The accident occurred in a grassy area on the south side of Illinois Street, between Lincoln Avenue and Gregory Street. The street has been closed to allow AT&T crews to work in safety.

Telephone service remained out at the Urbana Free Library as of this morning, but service was expected to be restored later today, Collins said.

At Urbana School District 116, phone service remained out at Urbana Middle School, Urbana High School, the Urbana Early Childhood Center and Urbana Adult Education as of late Tuesday morning. Phone calls to those schools were being forwarded to the Urbana School District Central Office, 205 N. Race St., where phone service was working, according to Linda Corbett, a school district administrative assistant.

Officials at the Urbana City Building had been able to make phone calls on Monday after some reprogramming was done by a city vendor, but incoming calls couldn‘t be received until full service was restored this morning.