Phone outage in Whatcom County, Bellingham and much of Skagit County since 7:45 am this morning according to news reports. KGMI is on top of this and the Bellingham Herald is posting special reports on their web page.

For years, local telecommunications professionals have been asking QWest, AT&T and the other communications companies to install redundant lines to Whatcom County. Strange, but I have been at meetings where representatives of these and other companies have announced that redundant lines are now in. Yet today's outage appears to be the result of a single line cut.

So - what polite word can we use to describe what the phone companies have told us? And where is the hard followup by local news media to expose the full story behind these repeated outages? And how much does each of these cost local businesses? These outages could be ended with leadership from the mayor. He can command honest answers from the companies - we citizens cannot. We need this fixed. This year. The fix is simple and the companies know what to do.