Internet restored after vandals cut line to northern Arizona

Phoenix police are investigating an act of vandalism that left many in northern Arizona without Internet access for much of Wednesday, authorities said.

Services in north Phoenix and northern Arizona were restored early Thursday morning after crews were able to repair the "deliberately cut" line in the New River area, according to a Centurylink spokesman.



Employees from Centurylink told police they stared receiving complaints of interrupted cable and Internet service at about noon Wednesday and, upon checking their system, determined the cause of the outage was coming from the area of New River and Circle Mountain roads, according to Officer James Holmes, a Phoenix police spokesman.

When employees inspected the cable conduits there, they found that someone had cut completely through the cable, causing the service disruption, Holmes said.

The service disruption, which lasted into the evening hours, meant all incoming and outgoing voice communications were down for areas north of Carefree Highway, up through the central corridor along Interstate 17 to Flagstaff and Page. Some areas were without Internet, as well.

Flagstaff police Sgt. Margaret Bentzen said that 911 calls were still working during the outage but non-emergency calls were not coming through.

As of Wednesday evening, most services had been restored and officials stated that customers still experiencing difficulties should try turning their modem off and on.

Police are investigating but did not immediately have any suspect or possible motive, Holmes said.