After two days, city of Stuart phone lines still down; it's unknown when service will return

STUART — Much of the city's phone service was still down on Friday after its provider unexpectedly cut service Wednesday evening, city officials said.

City offices had been scheduled to switch their phone service to AT&T Oct. 1, said city spokesperson Misti Guertin. But Windstream, its current provider, had the service cut off prematurely, and AT&T was working to get the new service installed as soon as possible, she said.

As of Friday afternoon, two days after the outage, service still had not been restored, she said, and officials had no estimate of when the phones would be back in service.

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A Windstream representative on Friday said the company was investigating the issue and would be reaching out to the city.

Emergency 911 lines and the Police Department's nonemergency number, 772-600-0119, are still operational, Guertin said.

"The 911 services have never gone down," she said. "Anyone that has an emergency, they just need to dial 911."

The city's main line — 772-288-5300 — is now operational, too, she said.

Thomas Weber is TCPalm's Indian River County government watchdog reporter. You can reach him at thomas.weber@tcpalm.com or 813-545-9113. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.