Major circuit outage causes wireless problems in High Desert

A major circuit outage is affecting many wireless carriers in the High Desert. A large number of residents have been without service since 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to officials.

Viewers said the problem is occurring for customers with Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Officials with Verizon Wireless said the problem is also affecting some landlines.

Heather Wong, the Southern California spokesperson for Sprint, said , “We are aware of a fiber cut in the Yucca Valley area that is causing a service disruption for some Sprint customers. Our network engineers are working aggressively to investigate the cause of this incident and readily restore service to our customers.”

Wong said it started around 11 a.m. Tuesday. The areas directly affected by the outage include Johnson Valley, Sunfair, Pioneertown and Hwy 38 near Onyx Peak. She also explained it’s difficult to measure the level of impact because they have other cell sites nearby which are not affected by the outage, so some customers aren’t having any issues in the affected areas.

Wong said the major circuit outage can be described as the backbone that all major wireless services are connected to and they hope to have the problem resolved as soon as possible.

Ken Munche with Verizon Wireless said the outage is also affecting landlines. He confirmed the outage affected Verizon customers beginning at 10:30 a.m. but he also doesn’t know when service will be restored.

There’s no word on how many total people are affected.

Viewers also said many banks are having trouble processing debit/credit cards during the outage.

News Channel 3 and CBS Local 2 are looking into the problem and we hope to have more details soon.