Computer Silences Westside Phones
About 19,000 General Telephone Co. customers in the Bel-Air and Brentwood areas were without service for nearly two hours Friday morning because of an apparent computer malfunction, a company spokesman said.
Larry Cox reported the outage, which lasted from 9:24 a.m. to 11:05 a.m., affected customers with 471, 472 and 476 prefixes. Cox said dial tones had been slow to come on for about an hour preceding the shutdown.
He said it was the first problem with new switching equipment installed last July.
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