Qwest in Wyo. said it will upgrade its 911 transmission system wi...
Qwest in Wyo. said it will upgrade its 911 transmission system with additional redundant circuits to prevent a repeat of an Aug. 1 incident where a cut cable knocked out E-911 and interexchange service on 134,000 of Qwest’s 200,000…
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lines in Wyo for several hours. But Qwest said its plans don’t include expansion of capacity. Currently, all 911 traffic flows in one direction along a single interoffice backbone path; if it’s severed, all downstream service is cut off. Qwest said it plans to split the 911 and interexchange traffic into 2 backbone paths routed in opposite directions so if one path is cut, the other can take over all traffic. The Wyo. PSC said Qwest’s announcement won’t halt a planned investigation into the massive 911 outage. Staffers said the process will be “fairly intensive” and may include discovery requests and hearings. The outage occurred when a Qwest contractor installing new underground lines in Cheyenne sliced through a main fiber artery.