The company, which provides telephone, Internet and other telecommunication service to customers in a nine-county area in West Texas, said problems ranged from customers either not getting a dial tone to having to dial long distance for local calls or being unable to access other special features such as call forwarding.

The company's problems began last week, when workers were installing a new switching system, CEO and General manager Bob Wilson said.

“We were installing new switching equipment when we suffered a software crash,” Wilson said. “Hopefully, by the end of (today), we'll be back at 100 percent service.”

Wilson said workers have been repairing the software problem “on the fly” since the malfunction and called the incident an isolated event.

“It should not have adversely effected service at all,” Wilson said. “Under normal circumstances, our customers would have never noticed it ... It was a one-in-a-million thing. The company has already done multiple upgrades. This was just one of those Friday the 13th freaky things that happened.”

The upgrade is a series of service improvements that Wilson said will improve the company's ability to provide services such as Voice Over the Internet and high-definition video.

For more information, contact the company in Big Spring at 263-0091 or in Stanton at 756-3393.

Contact Staff Writer Steve Reagan at 263-7331 ext. 234 or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it