Subscribers of Paging Network Inc. service in some 16 southeastern and southwestern states experienced service disruption for several hours Tuesday evening after lightning struck a terrestrial-based satellite uplink facility.
The incident occurred at about 6: 30 p.m. Central Standard Time at the uplink facility located in Richardson, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The lighting bolt damaged a motor on the facility that keeps the antenna pointed at the satellite, as well as other electrical equipment.
According to Joy Jennings, PageNet manager of corporate communications, the company had returned service to all southeastern states by 11 p.m. that same evening and to the rest of the states by midnight.
States affected by the outage were Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida.
“It was just a few hours during an off-peak period,” she said. “We were on the phone immediately notifying our major accounts.”
She said PageNet rerouted paging traffic to other parts of its national network, manually repositioned the damaged motor to keep the antenna directed at the satellite and brought in a transportable uplink facility until the existing facility could be repaired. Since then, the company said the damage has been repaired and the uplink facility is fully operational.
Only the company’s one-way network was affected. The soon-to-be-launched ReFLEX network experienced no service interruption as a result of the strike.
