Outage Stifles Kootenai Phones

Phones stopped ringing briefly in Kootenai County Monday afternoon when the switching center’s power supply failed.

Phone service was lost for 22 minutes to 29,000 Kootenai County customers, said Bob Wayt, GTE spokesman, and long-distance service was cut for 125,000 customers from Moscow to Sandpoint.

Service was restored at 3:40 p.m.

Technicians were still trying to determine late Monday what caused the power outage at the Coeur d’Alene switching center, Wayt said. The center routes all of Kootenai County’s local calls, including 911 service, and long-distance calls in Kootenai, Latah, Benewah, Shoshone, Bonner and Boundary counties. , DataTimes