Fiber Cut Disrupts Sprint Phone Service

Thousands of Sprint Nextel wireless and landline customers across the country were without service for about three hours Monday as two fiber lines in the network were cut around 3:30pm ET. The problem occurred in Sprint's lines running between Phoenix and Palm Springs, Calif.

While most of the affected customers were in the Western U.S., the company received scattered reports of service issues across the rest of the country as well. According to a statement from Sprint, the cut occurred during emergency maintenance near Reno Junction, Calif.

At the time, traffic was being routed through Phoenix. However, a second cut occurred on that line, thus knocking out service to the company's customers. The problems included dropped calls, inability to place long distance calls from Sprint Nextel landline and mobile phones, and delays in Internet traffic.

According to Sprint, the Reno Junction cut was repaired around 6:30pm ET, with repairs to the Phoenix cut completing about 30 minutes later. Service returned to normal by 10pm ET, Sprint said.

Within minutes of the cut, complaints began to flood in on mobile enthusiast sites.

"There are people out there that rely on their cell phones for business among other things," one user wrote on HowardForums.com. "What about people out there that are in an emergency situation and can't make a call to anyone?"