Dateline: March 20, 2003

Valor customers lose phone service

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

An estimated 8,000 Valor Telecom customers in the local region lost their long distance and 911 services Friday.

Customers in the Clarendon, Hedley, Lakeview, Memphis, Estelline, Wellington, Claude, Groom, and Panhandle exchanges were affected.

A Valor press release blamed the outage on fiber optic line being cut by a resident about 12:30 p.m. on the Groom highway 19 miles from Panhandle.

Repairing the line took approximately six hours, the release said.