A telecommunications glitch impacted internet and phone service in Cortez and Montezuma and Dolores counties last week.
The network — operated by the City of Cortez and Farmers Telephone and Communications Co. — experienced outages on Jan. 28 that interrupted internet and landline phone service for customers throughout the two-county area.
System failures began about 7 a.m., and technicians restored service about 9:15 p.m. Service is currently stable, officials said.
Emergency 911 service for the area was not impacted because it is operated by Century Link, a separate telephone network not affected by the outage, said Lori Johnson, Communications Supervisor for the Cortez Dispatch Center. A city landline for Cortez dispatch experienced outages, but the Century Link line for dispatch was operating normally.
Text 911 was affected because it relies on city of Cortez internet service, which went down, she said. When the Text 911 service is down, users receive a text response to dial 911 instead.
Montezuma County Sheriff issued a Nixle Emergency Alert that Cortez Dispatch was experiencing phone issues Thursday. The public was instructed to call 911 for emergencies and 970-565-8454 for non-emergencies. The alert has expired.
What caused the phone and internet glitch triggered some finger-pointing between the City of Cortez and Farmers.
The exact cause of the outage was unknown and is still under investigation, said Rick Smith, Cortez general services director.
“We got it fixed, but we’re still tracking down the root cause,” he said Monday. “It’s a complicated system. Once we identify the problem, we will take proactive action.”
Farmers is an internet and phone service provider on the city of Cortez telecommunications network, he said.
Farmers CEO Terry Hinds responded to a claim by City Manager John Dougherty that the company was to blame for the outage.
In a Jan. 29 letter to city and county officials, Hinds claims that the city had not conducted needed repairs on optical network terminals as part of a service alert from a telecommunications vendor.
The fault caused a “broadcast data storm” that disrupts services by overloading processors and routers of both Farmers and the City, Hinds said after the company internal investigation.
“Its an unfortunate event. Everyone has outages, but if they can be prevented, they should be,” he said in an interview.
He said the ONT glitch on the city’s side has been an ongoing problem, and has requested the city manager submit a plan on how to rectify the problem of the rogue ONT issue. Hinds also requested a minimum of one month credit on Farmer’s bill with the city.
Smith said he could not comment on the allegation because the outage cause is still being investigated.
In a city manager’s report Jan. 29, Dougherty stated the city’s fiber network was down “due to Farmers Telephone issues. Not sure what the issue was but when Farmers was taken off our system everything went back to normal. Farmers was told to solve their problem before they would be allowed back onto our infrastructure.”
The internet and telephone outage impacted county and city offices and businesses, and all of Farmers network, Hinds said. It extended to customers in Cortez, Dolores, Pleasant View, and Priest Gulch.
