About 10,000 customers of Frontier Communications in North Idaho regained DSL service Wednesday, following a major equipment failure, the telecommunications company said.

Frontier, based in New York state, acquired all of Verizon's phone and Internet customers last year in a major acquisition.

On Monday the first outage occurred and knocked off DSL service for a few hundred customers, said company spokeswoman Karen Miller.

On Tuesday, the problem grew worse as a more serious equipment failure knocked out most of the DSL customers from Coeur d'Alene to Bonners Ferry. Those customers began getting service back early Wednesday as work crews focused on the problem "around the clock," Miller said.

By Wednesday afternoon all customers had regained their DSL service, she added.

"We are truly sorry for the inconvenience this caused," she said.

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