I would like to respond to your Oct. 15 story about the fiber optic cable cut and service outage in the Bluffton area to ensure the facts are well understood.

The story includes a comment from a Time Warner spokesperson, who said, "We rely on lines being marked. Unfortunately, this line was unmarked and accidentally cut."

This implies that this was Hargray's responsibility. What the spokesperson failed to mention is that the lines were not marked because neither Time Warner nor its contractor made a proper request for such marking. If they had, Hargray would have gladly complied with the marking request; we have carefully made more than 25,000 such markings this year alone, and we would have been particularly diligent in the sensitive area in which the Time Warner contractor was digging.

The third-party investigator from U.S. Infrastructure Corp. noted in her findings about the incident: "No (locate) ticket for excavator."

We want your readers to know we go to extraordinary efforts to deliver reliable service, and it is always unfortunate when our competitor's activities undo those efforts and result in problems for our customers.

It's particularly unfortunate when our competitor's description of its activities imply it was not responsible for its mistakes.

Chris McCorkendale, vice president

Operations and engineering

Hargray Communications

Hilton Head Island