City to eye backup for communication
BY PHIL REYNOLDS SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

At least one city council member wants to know what plans the city has to back up telephone and computer communications in the event of another failure.

Keith McMullin has asked that a discussion of the matter be placed on the agenda for tonight, Thursday, Jan. 17. The council meets at 5 p.m. in the council chamber, 110 W. Ave. A.

McMullin said he talked with City Manager Michael Kovacs about the situation after a sliced optical fiber cable at State Hwy. 361 and Zahn Road, on Padre Island, isolated Mustang Island on Oct. 23. The cutting of the AT&T line, which carries all telecommunications between Port Aransas and the rest of the world, left the city without long-distance phone service and high-speed Internet digital subscriber lines (DSL).

"I was concerned that every aspect of communication was impacted when one line was cut," McMullin said. "Credit card machines, cell phones, Internet service and off-island phone calls were out for hours. What bothered me was the realization that Port A is likely to have this happen again and again unless some form of redundant system is put in place."

McMullin's concern became almost a forecast. On Jan. 2, while they were trying to make permanent repairs to the line that was cut on Oct. 23, workers under contract to AT&T once more sliced through the same cable. Once again, the city was isolated.

An intermittent problem Wednesday through Friday, Jan. 9-11, also left many residents and businesses without Internet service, although long-distance phone service wasn't affected, according to CenturyTel phone company spokesman Tracey Moses.

Moses said the most recent service interruption was because of a failed special circuit between San Marcos and Austin. Crews worked for most of two days - primarily at night, to avoid other disruptions - to find the problem and fix it, she said.

Moses said the intermittent nature of the problem made it even more difficult for crews to locate it and repair it.

The Jan. 9-11 outage affected only Internet communications, leaving telephones active, Moses said.

The city was also left without 9-1-1 emergency communications during the October and Jan. 2 disruptions, and the Jan. 2 line break left police without a backup communications system. Kovacs said a central emergency communications system should have switched Port Aransas police calls through a San Patricio County operator, but that didn't happen. He said police are trying to find out why that system failed and ensure it doesn't happen again.

McMullin, referring to the two cable cuts along State Hwy. 361, said one only needs to drive that stretch of highway to realize the potential for construction crews to slice through the cable again.

"I'm concerned that it will likely happen again," he said. "Will it be when someone tries to call 9-1-1, or when hundreds of people are trying to check in to our hotels and condos, or when we are trying to make evacuation plans in hurricane season? We've been lucky that both outages occurred during the slow season."

He said he asked that the matter be brought before the council so the city can plan for some kind of back-up system in the future.