WTIP Community Radio fans had an abrupt end to their listening enjoyment at 5:48 p.m. on Thursday, June 20, when the company installing fiber optic cable for the Cook County broadband accidentally cut a phone line.
MasTec North America Inc. was plowing in the fiber optic lines near WTIP Radio at 1712 West Highway 61 in Grand Marais when they snagged the phone line. Paul Connor of CitiLites Locating, which maps and marks where phone and power lines are, said the severed phone line was truly an accident.
Connor said his company had properly located the utility lines, but a splice had been made in the area at some point—probably when roadwork on Highway 61 was completed about nine years ago— and the phone line was no longer as deep as it should have been.
However, Connor said MasTec would still be liable for the cost of the repair, as excavators are required to dig by shovel when they are nearing the utility line depth.
WTIP Executive Director Deb Benedict said the radio station did not lose electrical power, but the loss of phone service knocked the station off the air. “We connect to the tower by phone line. And our Internet service, which allows people to webstream, is also connected to the phone,” she explained.
The station was off the air for about 12 hours, returning with regular programming at about 4 a.m. on Friday, June 21.
“These things happen,” said Benedict, who said the station would not seek any reimbursement for the lost airtime. “We have a lot of support from the business community and everyone needs this [broadband]. We need to be accommodating when something like this happens. We all need to work together.
“I was worried that there would be an extreme weather event, but that didn’t happen. Our services were not needed,” said Benedict. “We just hope that this won’t happen again.”
When MasTec was working in the Grand Marais Rec Park earlier this month, two electric lines in the campground were accidentally severed, leaving some sites without power. The power lines had been marked by Grand Marais Public Utility Commission crewmembers.
The county wide broadband project is being completed by Arrowhead Electric Cooperative Inc. Arrowhead Electric Cooperative has been awarded $11,296,239 in grant funding and $4,841,245 as a loan from the USDA Rural Utilities Service (RUS). The funding is part of the greater American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) implemented to facilitate the economic recovery in the United States. That funding, along with $4 million from Cook County from its 1 percent recreation and infrastructure sales tax, is funding the project that is intended to provide high speed Internet service to everyone in Cook County who currently has electric utility service.
The ground was broken on the broadband project in August 2011. At that time it was hoped that the fiber installation would be complete by the end of 2013.
A major step forward was made in the project when fiber optic cable construction began in Lake County on May 20. Arrowhead has a signed agreement to connect with the Lake County project as soon as it is available.
Anyone with questions about the broadband project is encouraged to contact Arrowhead Electric at (218) 663- 7239 or visit www.aecimn.com.
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