MANCHESTER – An overnight lapse in telephone service for FairPoint Communications customers in central and northern New Hampshire rendered phones across the Lakes Region and points west useless for an 11-hour stretch Monday night into yesterday.

Lakes Region General Hospital spokesman Natalie Rudzinskyj said hospital technicians had to reroute phone service through the Internet once the problem was discovered there about 2 a.m.

From what she was told, neither incoming nor outgoing calls within a certain range were going through.

"I was happy to hear we had a plan B in place," Rudzinskyj said.

Department of Safety spokesman Jim Van Dongen yesterday said the problem was a disruption in a fiber optic line which caused scattered problems, including no dial tone or extended area phone service, in the central part of the state.

Van Dongen said the state E-911 emergency system was not affected by the disruption; however those who could not get a dial tone could not call out.

"The 911 centers were always able to contact dispatch centers," he said, "but if someone needed an ambulance, they couldn't call 911 with no dial tone."

FairPoint Communications spokesman Jill Wurm attributed the problem to a fiber optic cable that burned in Canterbury, affecting a Laconia switching station and long-distance service from Canterbury and Laconia to the north.

Wurm said all disruptions were resolved by 10 a.m. yesterday. Some customers had full service in the early morning hours, she noted.

Jody O'Marra, utility analyst for the Public Utilities Commission, said the commission staff is still investigating what happened.

"Like Verizon before them, FairPoint has a responsibility to report major outages to us in a timely fashion, during business hours, or in a graver disruption, the staff is notified after hours," she said.

Belknap County Administrator Debra Shackett said her office was notified in the morning of the overnight outage.

"We heard people had tried to reach us -- our phone system is linked to the (Belknap County) nursing home, but by morning everything seemed to be all right," Shackett said.

"We would obviously be concerned about phone service if this happens frequently or regularly, but this is the first time it's happened, that I'm aware of. Frankly, I attributed it to the significant thunder and lightning we've been plagued with lately," Shackett said.

Earlier this year, FairPoint took over Verizon's landlines in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, after regulators in the three states approved the deal.

On June 28, Fairpoint customers in southeastern New Hampshire lost phone service for about 90 minutes due to malfunctioning switching equipment in Manchester.

During that disruption, calls from Concord to Salem were not processed and callers heard a quick busy signal. Van Dongen said in some cases, the 911 center in Concord could not reach police or fire departments in the affected areas by their primary telephone lines. Emergency operators got through by redialing the call, by radio or by an alternate telephone line, he said.

When asked last night whether the PUC had any lingering concerns over Fairpoint's ability to provide consistent service, PUC chair Thomas Getz said it was "premature" to draw any conclusions about the temporary loss of service.

"Our staff will be investigating the causes of the outage and take it from there," Getz said.