A damaged undersea communications cable has disrupted cell phone service in Petersburg and other Southeast Alaska communities – the Alaska Communications (ACS) subsea cable system serves as a carrier for multiple cell providers, including AT&T.
The broader regional outage began around 9:15 p.m. Thursday, with ACS and AT&T customers in Juneau, Haines, Skagway and Gustavus reporting limited or no service. Alaska Communications confirmed Friday that damage to their subsea cable system was the cause.
The cell phone outage didn't appear to hit Petersburg until Saturday, temporarily affecting 911 emergency calls and other area services before being restored by late afternoon.
The outage in Petersburg, appeared to begin around 11 a.m.
Devren Bennett with Homeport Electronics in Petersburg noted it was "kind of odd that the cable issue happened on Thursday and cell service problems only began arising on Saturday in Petersburg."
"We weren't able to receive any phone calls, including 911, unless it was from a landline," Petersburg police dispatch told the Pilot on Saturday. The department posted a public service announcement on Facebook advising residents to use landlines for calls during the outage.
After approximately three hours, full phone service including 911 emergency calls from cell phones was restored, according to police dispatch.
On Saturday, Petersburg Medical Center also experienced disruption to the portions of their phone system that rely on internet connectivity, though their landline remained operational throughout. By midafternoon Saturday the medical center reported normal phone functionality had resumed.
Systems at the James A. Johnson Airport in Petersburg were not disrupted by the Saturday outage, aside from affecting personal cell phones, Alaska Airlines station manager Chad Dolbeare confirmed for the Pilot.
The subsea cable damage mirrors a similar outage in Sitka last fall, when a broken subsea fiber optic cable left the community without internet for more than two weeks.
Throughout Southeast Alaska, the outage has affected various services. In Juneau, city phone lines went down, the Alaska state government website became inaccessible, and schools on Friday operated without internet. Emergency services have continued to function with some limitations.
ACS issued this update at 5:33 p.m. on Saturday: "Our engineers and technicians have provisioned restoral capacity to the State of Alaska to support State services. They made good progress today and are continuing work to restore service to the rest of Juneau and Southeast. This continues to be our top priority and we will keep working throughout the night to get service restored. We will share another update at 10 a.m. Alaska time March 2, unless there is new information before then."
Local officials recommend having alternative communication methods available until full services are restored throughout the region.
This story will be updated as it develops.
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