EarthLink fixes Boston-area DSL outage

Internet service provider EarthLink said it has solved an equipment problem that prevented an unspecified--though likely limited--number of high-speed (digital subscriber line) customers in the Boston area from surfing the Web, according to a company spokesman. The outages were intermittent and only affected customers served by a central-office phone switching facility owned and managed by Verizon Communications, he said. EarthLink believes the outages began Sunday and were fixed Wednesday night. "It seems that a relatively small portion of our subscriber base was affected," the spokesman said.