UPDATE: Sprint Phone Service 'Back to Normal'

UPDATE Wednesday 8:40 a.m.: Sprint cellular phone service in the region, including Alexandria, has now returned to normal status after overnight repairs, according to Fairfax County.

But in its announcement released Wednesday morning, the County also warned: "If you receive a busy signal when you call 9-1-1, you should attempt to text to 9-1-1, use a landline phone or use a cellphone covered by another provider."

A Sprint spokeswoman said that 911 service was "fully restored" late Tuesday night. Here's their full statement:

"On Tuesday power outages and a fire near our Washington DC switch site caused our wireline services to be impacted, which in turn impacted 9-1-1 calls for some wireless customers. 9-1-1 service was fully restored at 10:45 pm ET. We continue to work aggressively to fully restore service for our wireline customers. The safety and security of our customers is a top priority and we apologize to our customers."

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ALEXANDRIA, VA -- Sprint cellular service continues to impact 911 service in Northern Virginia Tuesday night including Alexandria, according to a Sprint spokeswoman.

Full cellular service for Sprint customers may return to the region by Wednesday evening, Fairfax County said in an alert sent out late Tuesday night.

If you receive a busy signal when you call 9-1-1, you should attempt to text to 9-1-1, use a landline phone or use a cellphone covered by another provider, the jurisdictions advised.

"Due to an extensive commercial power outage and fire, some Sprint wireline customers in the Metro DC Area are unable to access voice and data service," said Adrienne Norton, a spokeswoman for the company, in an email to Patch. "We are working aggressively to restore power and full services, and we apologize for the inconvenience to our customers."

Norton said late Tuesday that Sprint's DC switch site lost power and a backup generator failed at the site. Restoration of service is still underway, she said in an email at 8:30 p.m.

Representatives from both Dominion Power in Northern Virginia and Pepco in Washington, D.C. say they are not aware of any power outages that caused the Sprint problems or anyone with Sprint getting in touch with their companies about the problem.

The problems with Sprint's service are widespread and stretch to the entire D.C. region, although DC proper reports that 911 calls using Sprint in DC are coming through.

Montgomery, Md. County Council member Roger Berliner told the Montgomery County Sentinel that "... clearly, we’re going to need to call these people [Sprint] in so we can have an understanding as to what happened and why and it’s just… what can you say? As one of my colleagues said, this is people’s worst nightmare.”

Berliner serves as the chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

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