By KAREN MIKOLS

kmikols@hdnews.net

Construction crews accidentally cut a fiber optic cable Wednesday afternoon, causing a disruption in some cable and phone services.

"I think only our Wichita channels were affected," said Joe Engel, director of marketing for Eagle Communication.

Eagle channels interrupted include ABC, Fox, NBC, MYTV and CW.

Service was also interrupted for Nex-Tech customers who lost long distance service.

"We offered dial around options," Nex-Tech COO Jeff Wick said. "They could still make long distance calls with the dial around option, but not by just picking up their phone."

Wick said the cable was cut about 3 p.m., but services were restored by about 8 p.m.

"Our internet uses (the fiber optic cable), but we have a redundancy, so our internet was not affected by the outage," Engel said.

Wick said Nex-Tech's internet and cell phone coverage was unaffected by the cut.

The fiber optic cable was cut by a contractor working for Rural Telephone, Wick said. The cable belonged to Cox Communications, and a crew repaired the cable.

"Cox was very diligent in getting it repaired," Wick said. "We apologize to all of our customers who were impacted by the outage."

In addition to phone disruption, Wick said Nex-Tech's high definition channels were affected by the cut.

"It's just one of those things that happens," Engel said. "It was construction and sometimes things aren't marked properly."