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MURRAY -- Thousands of Internet, cable and phone customers in the southwest part of the Salt Lake Valley lost service for several hours Friday. Turns out, the blame lies with a Murray construction crew that was drilling in the wrong spot.
Comcast says one of its fiber-optic cable lines was severed about 9 a.m. by a crew from an unidentified company, working in the road at 5400 South and 700 West.
"The fiber-optic cut was caused by another company not related to Comcast," said Comcast spokesman Ray Child "Apparently a crew was drilling into the street, and the drill bit struck one of our fiber-optic cables."
The break caused thousands of Comcast customers to lost service in South Jordan, West Jordan, Riverton, Bluffdale, Herriman and parts of Murray and Taylorsville.
One customer impacted was a pain relief clinic in South Jordan. The clinic is new and keeps its records in a web-based database, so the loss of Internet service proved a challenge until the system came back up around 2:30 p.m.
"This morning when I got here, the Internet was working great. And then at 9:00 nothing was working, and that's when we start working on operations," said Seth Pratt, facility director of the Utah Pain Relief Institute. "But this shows that it's harder to have this kind of a system if the Internet doesn't work for it."
A Comcast company says it now has service restored to most areas affected, except parts of Murray and Taylorsville.
E-mail: jdaley@ksl.com
