A malfunction at an AT&T transmission center disrupted long-distance service in New England for up to three hours and delayed airline flights out of Boston in the phone company's fourth major outage in two years.
About 60 percent of all long-distance calls placed through AT&T out of New England didn't get through Tuesday, American Telephone & Telegraph Co. spokesman Paul Karoff said.The outage interfered with communication between airports and airplanes, causing slight delays at Logan International Airport in Boston, said Mike Ciccarelli, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
The problem originated at a transmission facility in Blackstone, a town southwest of Boston near Rhode Island, Karoff said.