String of fiber optic line troubles cause phone, internet outages at five south Deschutes County schools
La PINE, Ore. (KTVZ) -- A fiber optic line that Bend-La Pine Schools' five schools in southern Deschutes County rely on for phone and internet service has been severely damaged, causing outages several times over the past few months.
Monday’s outage was caused by logging equipment along US Highway 97 south of Bend, Bend-La Pine Director of Communications Scott Maben said Tuesday. That damage was repaired Monday afternoon.
The school district sent out texts and emails Monday to notify and update families from the affected schools: La Pine High School, La Pine Middle School, La Pine Elementary School, Rosland Elementary School and Three Rivers School in Sunriver.
"Schools are continuing to operate on normal schedules," they advised. "School safety and emergency response systems are intact and unaffected by this service issue. If you need to share an urgent message with one of these schools today, please call our central office in Bend at 541-355-1000."
Prior to Monday's outage, Maben said, "significant damage to the fiber optic line" occurred on Dec. 14, causing a 20-hour outage affecting the five schools and other customers. He did not have details about how that damage occurred.
A similar outage affecting the five south county schools happened in mid-September and "was thought to have been caused by a squirrel chewing on the fiber line," Maben said.
"We are still waiting on full repair of our fiber service down south from the big December outage," he explained. "It’s working, but with degraded signal strength."
"The repair or replacement is challenging because it’s at a point where the fiber spans the Deschutes River. That work is happening now. When completed, we expect to regain full performance of our circuits and have redundant services back online."
Maben said TDS has been working to replace some of the vulnerable aerial fiber with underground fiber.
"Once that project is complete, we should see increased reliability and less susceptibility to above-ground damage," he said.
A TDS spokesman said he did not have information on the service issues affecting the area.
