JOHNSTOWN - An urgent message is being sent to customers from businesses in the Moxham and Hornerstown areas of the city.
Businesses want to inform customers that they have limited communication due to service outages. This means no internet and phone service. Store owners say it's been going on since Monday.
Sometimes silence can s be a good thing, but inside Moxham Lumber Company, silence is becoming a problem.
"We've had dozens of people like 'Ah, I didn't know what happened to you we kept calling but I didn't get a busy signal it goes to nothing,' " Brad Gordon said.
Moxham Lumber Vice President, Brad Gordon, says the company has been without phone service and internet since Monday morning.
He says he was told a construction issue on Horner Street is what led to wires being cut accidentally.
"Monday we were told by evening it would be corrected. Tuesday, we were told by evening it would be corrected. This morning still nothing and now we are being told it may be until the end of the week before businesses are up and running," Gordon said.
Gordon says the company is still functioning just with some inconveniences when it comes to billing other business functions.
A lot of these places are now having to use cell phones to conduct business but most of the stores in the area have been around for decades and having a bit of normalcy is key to success.
"I talked to my boss this morning and he said this is killing me," Peggy Hoover said.
Hoover, who is with Kuhn's and Young, which sells cleaning products , says their business is experiencing the same thing.
"Being a small business not having the phones has put a hurt on our business," Hoover said.
The EADS group, along with the Johnstown Redevelopment Authority, is apologizing, saying it was an accident.
They say a contractor hit a fiber-optic line during sewer pipe installation.
"It's a competitive world out there and we'd like to be competitive with basic communication, but a few techno glitches right now for that," Gordon said.
Verizon relations officials said the following via email:
"A sewer contractor, excavating an area on Horner Street, severed both a copper cable and a fiber-optic cable that serves customers in that immediate area. Our technicians repaired the fiber cable Monday night, restoring fiber customers. We’re continuing to splice the copper cable back together for our copper customers.
"As you can imagine it’s a very manual process to splice all of the tiny wires inside the cable back together one by one. Repair work continues to restore service completely as soon as possible."
The EADS group says the contractor goes through a procedure with Verizon before excavation, and the contractor, along with Verizon, will have to determine if the line was marked.
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