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SALT LAKE CITY — A reported massive CenturyLink outage across the country Thursday created problems for some Utah government entities, too.
“Government is currently experiencing issues with our phone and internet services related to a nationwide problem. We apologize for any inconvenience this is causing residents trying to reach departments,” Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski tweeted Thursday afternoon.
CenturyLink officials said on Twitter late Thursday evening that "engineers have identified a network element that was impacting customer services," and they were working to "fully restore services."
CenturyLink estimated that service would be back to normal by the early hours of Friday morning.
Utah state courts spokesman Geoffrey Fattah added that Utah’s court system also experienced “sporadic internet outages” Thursday.
#SLC government is currently experiencing issues with our phone and internet services related to a nationwide problem. We apologize for any inconvenience this is causing residents trying to reach departments. pic.twitter.com/Jq3oTRZnQi
— Mayor J. Biskupski (@slcmayor) December 27, 2018
Salt Lake Valley Emergency Communications Center officials said the dispatch center dealt with issues earlier in the day, but switched services and was running Thursday afternoon. Unified police dispatch officials also told KSL it experienced issues that have since been fixed.
Dispatch centers in Box Elder and Summit counties, as well as Bountiful also confirmed problems with their centers in one way or another. Most dispatch centers across the state were not affected.
Salt Lake International Airport spokeswoman Nancy Volmer told KSL the outage had a small impact on operations, such as slow paging and lost and found systems, but those problems were fixed when the airport switched to a backup system. However, she wasn't sure if individual airlines were affected.
Newsweek reported CenturyLink users across the country began dealing with outages since about 4 a.m. Eastern. The outages were a problem throughout the day.
For those wanting updates on Utah outages, the website istheservicedown.com reports outages across the Wasatch Front.
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating the outage.
Contributing: Jacob Klopfenstein, KSL.com; KSL TV
