SERVICE interrupted to SW Bell customers in northern Oklahoma

Saturday, July 28th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Southwestern Bell telephone customers in parts of northern Oklahoma went without long-distance service for more than six hours Friday after a fiber optic cable was severed in Payne County, authorities said.

The buried line near Interstate 35 and State Highway 51 was cut about 3 p.m., Southwestern Bell spokeswoman Emily MacDonald said.

The hardest hit areas were Ponca City, Perry, Stillwater and Enid, where residents could not call out-of-town numbers or receive calls from outside their towns. There also were reports of disrupted service in Woodward.

The outages scattered across the state restricted long-distance calling within Oklahoma, but did not affect 911 service, MacDonald said.

Service in some areas was restored about 8:30 p.m. All service had been restored by about 9:15 p.m.

Officials did not know the immediate cause of the severed line, but were investigating it.

``It hasn't been determined who cut the fiber,'' MacDonald said.