Frontier’s internet service to the Eastern Panhandle was knocked out at 3:40 am today due to a cut in a fiber optic line.
Frontier technicians at the site — about 16 miles outside of Martinsburg, West Virginia in a hard to get to location — surmised that thieves seeking to steal copper cut the line. There is no copper in a fiber optic line.
Frontier technicians restored internet service at about 2:30 pm.
Frontier spokesperson Dan Page estimated that about 20,000 Frontier customers in Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire and parts of Mineral county lost service due to the cut in the line.