AT&T: Outage Possibly Related to Storm Drain Work

The AT&T outage that left hundreds of residents and businesses without service for up to a week has been resolved, the company said. 

But now there are questions being raised about what might have caused such a rare service outage. 

With the problem now fixed, the company will be conducting an investigation into what might have led to a manhole being flooded on Oct. 5 that damaged several underground cable lines near San Mateo Avenue and San Bruno Avenue, an AT&T spokesman said Thursday. One possible factor being looked into is some storm drain work the city was doing in the area. The Caltrain grade separation project is also underway in the same area. 

“It would appear this work being done on the storm drains resulted in us getting an unusual amount of water in a manhole,” said AT&T spokesman John Britton, who added that the company’s investigation could take months before determining a cause. 

The city reported on its website that the problem started last week when heavy rain caused a manhole to be flooded at the downtown intersection, shutting down several underground copper cables. About 400 residential and business customers frustratingly lost service, according to the city. 

In fact, it appears about 800 customers were affected by the outage, Britton said. The company is still determining if there are any more people having problems with their service, he added. 

It is still unusual, Britton said, for a manhole to become flooded, especially when it didn’t seem to rain that hard last week. According to the National Weather Service, San Bruno received 0.68 inches of rain on Oct. 5. 

Klara Fabry, the city's public services director, said she was not aware of any storm drain work the city was performing in the area. JPB, who is managing the grade separation work, also said its work wasn't related to the outage, Fabry added.

While some customers have told Patch that they were still receiving glitches in their service after AT&T fixed its cables, Britton said the company will be doing its best to address every customers’ needs. He said customers whose service was disrupted should be a receiving a credit on their bill. If anyone is still having problem, he said they could send their phone number to San Bruno Patch and the company would immediately work to resolve the issue. 

“Outages are not only an inconvenience to customers, but they cost us a lot of money to fix,” Britton said. “So it is important for us to get to the bottom of it.”