Shawnee Co. Sheriff’s Office explains phone issues, 911 services remain intact

Alyssa Storm
·1 min read

TOPEKA (KSNT) – A local law enforcement agency had phone issues, along with many other Kansans, Wednesday.

The Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) told 27 News it had some issues with phones being down, but that it had no impact on the Shawnee County Emergency Communications Center’s ability to receive incoming calls.

A spokeswoman with the SCSO said in a statement that a series of “an unrelated series of service associated events” took place in Kansas in close proximity with each other. This information was given to the SCSO from cellular service representatives and system administrators of its state-wide NG911 system.

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“Those events are as follows:

1.       A significant fiber cut occurred in Franklin County which in-turn had far reaching effects. This event did impact our “commercial VoIP phone lines” which are the phones that we use to make and receive standard calls for business and administrative purposes.

2.       Shortly thereafter a service provider had a “card / circuit board” fail at one of their main locations. As I understand it, the failure of this piece of hardware produced wide-spread service degradation on numerous cellular towers in Kansas.“

Excerpt from SCSO spokeswoman’s statement

Although the business and administrative calls were temporarily stunted, the SCSO told 27 News its ability to receive incoming 911 calls on the 911 lines stayed available, even if citizens had issues dialing from their cellphones.

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This happened while many AT&T customers experienced the inability to make phone calls Wednesday.

An AT&T spokesman told 27 News service has been restored for its wireless customers in Kansas. This service issue was caused by an equipment failure and a fiber optic line that was severed.

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