EarthLink blames outage on power failure

Internet service provider EarthLink confirmed on Wednesday that it experienced a power outage at one of its facilities, which led to a 12-hour interruption in service for dial-up customers in the San Francisco Bay Area and longer for broadband customers. EarthLink representatives would not speculate why the Atlanta company's backup systems failed to maintain its ISP services. They said only a portion of its customers in the Bay Area were affected, as the event was confined to one facility.

It is not certain when exactly the interruption first occurred, but EarthLink said it began sometime Tuesday evening and had been remedied completely by 7:45 a.m. EST Wednesday for dial-up customers. However, some 12,000 digital subscriber line customers in the area were not expected to see their service restored until some time Thursday. That's because the power outage damaged a router that serves those customers, who, the EarthLink representative said, can access their dial-up accounts as a backup.