Verizon services outside Baltimore impacted by train derailment

Verizon (NYSE: VZ) said that a train derailment Tuesday morning west of Baltimore in Ellicott City damaged the telco's facilities at the accident site, knocking out voice and data service to some customers.

The service provider said that a number of area customers may have trouble completing long-distance voice calls and some business and government customers' data services may be affected.

At the time of this writing, Verizon is waiting to get permission from local agencies to get into its facilities at the accident site. When it gets permission to enter the site, the telco's technicians will examine the extent of the damage and work in round-the-clock shifts to ensure it can restore services.

The carrier said has restored services to some customers in the area by rerouting network traffic to other network facilities.

"We understand 911 services are not currently affected, said Jeffrey Nelson, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Verizon Enterprise Solutions in an e-mail to FierceTelecom, adding that the company will provide more details today at 1:00 pm ET.

Shortly before 9 p.m. ET Tuesday, Aug. 21, less than 24 hours after the derailment, Verizon said it had fully restored all services that were damaged by the train derailment west of Baltimore in Ellicott City.

For more:
- see the release

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