Watson Lakers were again without landline phone, Internet, fax and Interac services Wednesday when another Northwestel cable was severed.

Services aren't expected to be fully restored until Saturday morning.

Just two weeks ago, another cable was accidentally severed by a contractor doing work in the southern community. This time, Northwestel has confirmed it was cut by a commercial business that was digging fence posts and hadn't had the cable located prior to digging, Northwestel spokeswoman Anne Kennedy said this morning.

Kennedy would not release who had cut into the lines and noted Northwestel's legal branch and insurance company would be working on the matter.

Among the 400 business lines, 120 residential lines and a few pay phones knocked out of service was the Watson Lake RCMP's non-emergency phone line.

Watson Lake Sgt. John Bennett said this morning the outage didn't have a huge impact on policing the community as the emergency number was still working.

When the landlines went down, Bennett used his cell phone to make sure the emergency line was still in operation.

The emergency line will dispatch to Whitehorse if officers are out of the detachment in the community. Whitehorse operators can then reach officers in the communities by radio.

Bennett noted there were a few regular calls officers responded to last night from the time the phones went down in the late afternoon until early morning when they were back up again.

While Kennedy wasn't sure exactly what time the lines went down, she said the first call about it came in at 3:30 p.m.

A technician in Watson Lake immediately responded with two technicians from Whitehorse there around midnight, close to the same time the RCMP line was back up again.

Since it wasn't a clean sever to the large cable, Kennedy said it took quite a bit of time to prepare the site so the lines could be fixed.

The first priority for Northwestel was getting the RCMP non-emergency line back in service, Kennedy said.

Technicians continued to work until 5 a.m. this morning to get other customers back on the system. They then took a break before starting again at 8 a.m., Kennedy said.

It likely will be Saturday before all the affected customers are able to use their phone lines again.

The situation means Northwestel has had to push new service orders set for late this week ahead to Monday, Kennedy said.

A location for Northwestel's cable hadn't been established prior to the digging of the fence posts, Kennedy said. In last week's case, the location had been established, but then markers for the cable were covered and couldn't be seen before the area was dug.