ALBANY — At the request of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York State Department of Public Service (DPS) today announced that it is investigating the disruption to landline and wireless phone service in Central New York that began mid-afternoon on Monday, Aug. 22, and is continuing as of this morning.

“The public relies on telephone service to connect to the world around them, which is why it is a critical service to maintain,” said Department Chief Executive Officer Audrey Zibelman. "Our investigation will seek to determine the root cause of the outage and other underlying facts in an effort to understand how this occurred and help prevent future outages.”

Landline and wireless service is affected in portions of four Central New York counties — Madison, Chenango, Cortland and Otsego — impacting more than 1,500 customers of several telecommunication companies, including Verizon, Frontier Communications and Windstream Communications. Full restoration is expected by mid-afternoon today.

According to the Department’s preliminary review, the outage was caused by damage to an underground Verizon-owned fiber cable in the Town of Stockbridge, Madison County. The fiber cable is used to for local telephone service and transport services of other providers from different parts of Central New York. Repair and service restoration is taking additional time due to the location of the fiber optic cable along the roadway.

Currently there are no reported impacts to the County Emergency Communications Centers (911) and no requests for assistance.

The Department’s investigation will include an evaluation of the circumstances surrounding the cable damage; the company’s response to the incident; company communications with emergency responders; and develop investigation conclusions with the goal of preventing or minimizing future outages. The investigation is expected to take several weeks to complete.