The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that sabotage suspected in widespread phone outage in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties

Police are investigating whether sabotage to an underground fiber optic cable in south San Jose caused a widespread phone service outage in southern Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties this morning that included disruption to 911 emergency phone service, according to law enforcement officials.

John Britton, a spokesman for AT&T, said it appears somebody opened a manhole in South San Jose, climbed down 8 to 10 feet and cut four or five fiber-optic cables.

San Benito county is also affected. Even cell phones are reported to be offline.