Failure Disrupts Some Telephone Services

An SBC Communications Inc. data network failed, cutting service to customers throughout California and Nevada and temporarily disabling a feature that identifies callers’ addresses to 911 operators. Other services that might have been affected include Internet access, automated teller machines and retail credit card readers, said James Britton, a spokesman for the phone company’s Pacific Bell unit.

The outage, which began at 8:05 a.m., affected 22,000 circuits, he said. The company restored about 6,000 of the lines by 1:30 p.m. and hoped to have service fully restored by today.

Although the network failure didn’t prevent voice calls from being made, including those to 911, it did disable the 911 identification function that was set up in case a caller couldn’t speak, Britton said. Most of that problem was fixed by noon, he said.

Shares of San Antonio-based SBC closed off 74 cents at $42.35 on the New York Stock Exchange.