Campus phone service restored

· 2 min read

Campus phone service restored

by University Communication and Marketing
Windstream employees have started work to repair a cut phone cable on 14th Street, between O and P streets. The damage, which affects numerous UNL phones, is expected to take several days to repair.
Troy Fedderson | University Communications
Windstream employees worked around the clock in the past week to repair damaged phone cables on 14th Street, between O and P streets. The damage, which affected numerous UNL phones, took several days to repair.

All UNL phone lines that went down last week following an off-campus construction mishap have been restored.

Windstream crews, working around the clock, finished the repairs to the final damaged cable this past weekend. Four phone cables related to university phone service were damaged by construction contractors working south of campus on May 5.

Initially, about 300 of UNL’s 8,000 land lines were affected.

After restoring service to buildings on R Street between 15th and 16th streets, crews repaired a cable dedicated to Harper and Smith residence halls, the emergency phones in the 14th and Avery parking structure, plus Neihardt Hall and the nearby vicinity. Late last week, they turned toward restoring Nebraska Union phone lines.

The fourth and final cable, which feeds Canfield Administration Building, Schramm Hall, the UNL Power Plant and some lines into the Nebraska Union, was brought back fully over the weekend.

The cables were repaired in the order in which they physically appeared to technicians in manholes on North 14th Street between O and P streets, the site of the damage.

The partial outage damaged service for UNL blue emergency phones, phones in elevators and emergency fire-alarm lines in several areas across campus. UNL officials posted signs on elevators around campus encouraging those getting on the elevators to be sure to carry a cell phone, or to be sure that someone in their party was carrying a cell phone, in the event of an emergency.

Windstream is using a length of three-inch thick cable to splice into the damaged underground phone cable. The cable has 3,000 cable pairs on each end, meaning 6,000 splices will be completed when the repair is finished.
Troy Fedderson | University Communications
Windstream used a length of three-inch thick cable to splice into the damaged underground phone cable. The cable has 3,000 cable pairs on each end, meaning up to 6,000 splices were completed when the repair was finished.
The phone cable repair has closed 14th Street in downtown Lincoln between O and P streets.
Troy Fedderson | University Communications
The phone cable repair closed 14th Street in downtown Lincoln between O and P streets for several days.

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