CHEYENNE - Qwest Communications International Inc. has announced plans to upgrade its 911 delivery system in Wyoming, largely to prevent a repeat of the Aug. 1 outage that left much of the state without service for hours.

The upgrade will add a layer of redundancy to the fiber cable system but will not increase capacity, said Mike Ceballos, president for Qwest in Wyoming.

"I'm very excited about the solution," Ceballos said. "If you look forward, this will really help us address specifically what's happened, and put us in a much better situation."

Meanwhile, the state Public Service Commission is preparing to initiate a "formal investigatory process" into the outage at its Tuesday meeting in Cheyenne. The "fairly intensive process" could include hearings and requests for data from Qwest, said Steve Oxley, secretary and chief counsel for the PSC.

The PSC has four of its 23 staff members investigating the outage, Oxley told The Associated Press.

The outage at 3:11 p.m. Aug. 1 interrupted 911 services to about 134,000 of the less than 200,000 phone lines Qwest serves in Wyoming, Ceballos said. Full service was restored about seven hours later.

The outage occurred when a contractor working to extend service to a school in Cheyenne cut Qwest's main fiber artery.

It remains unclear whether the Qwest contractor was at fault or if One Call of Wyoming, the utility locator service, made the error, Ceballos said.

"Clearly, in that case, someone will become accountable for that," he said.

Upgrades fall short

This wasn't the first time Wyoming lost 911 service.

A rancher in the northern part of the state drilled through the same fiber line while making a fence on Oct. 31, 1999, causing a large outage.

Since then, Qwest and local emergency coordinators improved the system, but those efforts proved to be insufficient to stop another large-scale outage.

Work on the latest upgrade should begin next week and conclude by the end of September, Ceballos said.

Here's how it will work:

The current 911 delivery system flows in a single direction around the state. When a break occurs, all downstream customers lose service.

The upgrade will redirect half of the circuit in the opposite direction, essentially creating two independent paths for 911 calls. If one path is severed, the other will sustain service, albeit with less capacity.

Ceballos said a simultaneous cut in both circuits is highly unlikely.

"This doesn't mean there will never be a failure," Ceballos cautioned. "It never eliminates that something couldn't happen with a single office or a spur, but it's just going to take down the probability to a very low level."

Ceballos added that because the 911 system operates on a buried fiber cable, concerns that a Casper-area wildfire could have damaged the system by burning a microwave transmitter were unfounded. He said fire did not damage the tower.

Ceballos did not know how much the 911 upgrade will cost, but it will be expensive - which is the biggest reason it hasn't already happened, he said.

Other states have recognized the vulnerability of their single-track systems and opted to pay for upgrades. Ceballos said Qwest will foot the bill in Wyoming.

"We just decided we're going to pay to do this," he said.

No lives threatened

Communities from Jackson to Lusk lost service when the line went down.

Law enforcement officials later said they were caught off-guard by the lack of redundancy in the system, and were surprised it took so long to restore service.

Ceballos said basic 911 service was restored statewide between two and a half to three and a half hours after the cut.

"No one has told us of an incident where there was a life-threatening issue because of this," Ceballos said. "That's not to say that somebody didn't call 911 and have to get there another way."

Qwest provides 911 services to most of Wyoming, though the service is competitive and smaller providers do operate in the state. Ceballos said smaller carriers that piggyback on the Qwest fiber line may also have experienced a lapse in service.

A wake-up call

Local emergency coordinators snapped to attention when the lines went dark.

Mike Conners, chief information officer for Park County in northern Wyoming, said he called local Qwest technicians who were already scrambling for solutions.

Conners' office coordinated with local radio stations and the National Weather Service to alert the public via airwaves and local TV channels.

By about 5 p.m. the dispatch center began taking emergency calls on a seven-digit number. However, dispatchers were without detailed caller information until about 10:30 p.m., Conners said.

"There was a period of about an hour that we were concerned that someone would dial 911 and it wouldn't go anyplace," Conners said.

Shelly Steinfeld, communications director in Converse County, said radio DJs in her area instructed listeners to call Douglas Police Department dispatchers with emergencies.

Steinfeld said the cut was a wake-up call for local emergency coordinators.

Reach capital bureau reporter Jared Miller at (307) 632-1244 or at jared.miller@casperstartribune.net.