New Orleans Still in the Dark about Internet, Phones

As New Orleanians begin to re-enter their neighborhoods, telephone and Internet service remains spotty at best, and the major service providers say they don't know when connections will be restored. Neither BellSouth Corp., the local telephone giant that also offers high-speed Internet service, nor Cox Communications, the region's biggest cable television service, have been willing to say how many of their New Orleans area customers have high-speed Internet service or how many are still waiting for it to be restored. Their behavior contrasts with Entergy, which has provided daily updates on power restoration since the storm. Resolving the problem could take a while. Even as BellSouth and Cox repair local fiber-optic cables, overhead wires and network routers, their high-speed digital pipelines have continued to break because of the swarms of storm repair crews digging underground and moving equipment under overhead lines.
[SOURCE: New Orleans Times-Picayune, AUTHOR: Keith Darcé kdarce@yahoo.com]