Countywide

Telephone service was nearly back to normal Tuesday after a long-distance switching machine malfunction thwarted thousands of callers in San Diego and Imperial counties Monday, a Pacific Bell spokesman said.

“Ninety-nine percent of our long-distance calling is doing fine, and 97% of our calls from point to point within the two-county area are doing fine,” said spokesman Tom McNaghten. He said the system was not quite back to normal because of “extremely heavy” telephone use by people who were unable to complete many calls Monday.

The exact cause of the malfunction is still undetermined, but McNaghten said it was probably a computer software problem.