News

Telephone troubles affect the local area

By Scott Wagar

07/17/2012

Individuals in and around the Turtle Mountain area this past Tuesday experienced difficulties with using their phones while making calls, causing a delay in communication for six and a half hours for the local residents due to an accident which took place 88 miles away.

According to Dennis Plummer of Turtle Mountain Communications in Langdon, a utility company laying water pipes south of Harvey accidentally cut a fiber optic line causing the difficulties in this area.

With the fiber optic line cut, it caused problems for local residents in making long distance phone calls with both land and cell phones.

“You could make local calls, get long distance calls, but making a long distance phone call, depending where you were calling, didn’t work at times,” Plummer said. “For instance, if you were calling from Bottineau to Fargo that call would have gone through. However, if you were calling from Bottineau to Rolla that phone call wouldn’t have gone through, because when you call from Bottineau to Rolla, the phone call first goes to Bismarck, then to Rolla and goes through the area where the fiber optic line was cut.”

Splicing the fiber optic line back together took some time because of the distance the repairmen had to drive to fix the line.

Plummer said it was an unfortunate accident which took place, but because of the way the fiber optics are set up in the state there wasn’t anything TMC could do about the event.

“It was out of our jurisdiction,” Plummer said. “And, kind out of our hands.”