Aug. 21--By DEBORAH BUCKHALTER

Floridan Staff Writer

Sneads had the eerie experience of total isolation Wednesday when phone service to the outside world went out all over town around noon.

Sneads customers could communicate with each other, but could not call outside the city and could not get calls coming from the outside. As a result, residences and businesses, as well as the police department and other critical numbers, rang busy most of the day. Many cell phone customers were affected as well as those with land lines.

Embarq representative Tom Matthews said the problem occurred when a heavy truck from another company accidentally ran over a fiber optic splice that had been exposed during a work project.

The work had been done about two weeks ago, and the splice, coiled and marked since that time, had until Wednesday escaped damage despite being partially vulnerable.

Embarq has been waiting on delivery of a specialized protective fiberglass and steel precast encasement for the splice, he said. Ironically, it is due to arrive this morning at 8 a.m., he said.

Matthews said the splice is located in Grand Ridge alongside the edge of U.S. 90, but that it is a Sneads service line.

Crews worked on the problem most of the day and service was restored just after 5 p.m.

"We regret that it happened, and I'm sure it was an inconvenience for the people in the community," Matthews said. This may have disrupted some ATM and credit card transactions for businesses in the area, but we haven't had many of those complaints, so hopefully it was minimal disruption. Unfortunately, it appears that another utility came along and was doing some work in the right-of-way and just happened on the wrong spot. The weight was just to much and it happened. We worked as quickly as we could to get everything restored."

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