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With nearly 100 residents in Berkeley and Albany nearing the end of their first week without telephone service, SBC, as of press time Thursday, continued to repair water-logged underground cables. 

The telephone company expected to restore service to the customers before Friday, said SBC spokeswoman Bridget Stachowski.  

Since service first failed last Friday evening, she said, the company had restored service to about 90 percent of the estimated 960 homes and business affected in a radius stretching from just north of Solano Avenue to Hopkins Street in Berkeley. 

Telephones died at approximately 8 p.m. Friday when SBC’s air pressure system malfunctioned. Without the system, designed to keep ground water away from fragile telephone cables, water flooded four cables at the corner of Marin Street and Ventura Avenue, one block south of Solano Avenue. 

The damaged cables sit in the heart of the Marin Watershed where the water table is high and culverts are built into adjacent streets to carry creek water into the Bay.  

Stachowski said replacing the cables was a laborious process that entailed connecting thousands of wires. 

“We’ve had people out there nearly 24 hours a day,” she said. 

Business owners interviewed Thursday said the telephone problems hadn’t severely impacted sales. 

“We couldn’t pass through credit card purchases this morning, but for the most part it hasn’t had any effect,” said Pete Raxakoul of Coffee Market on Hopkins Street, which experienced brief service interruptions Thursday. 

Jennie at Lilly’s Restaurant, also on Hopkins, said the restaurant’s telephone had a lot of static, but never went out of service. 

The service disruptions have not followed a consistent pattern. On the 1600 block of Solano Avenue, just one block from the damaged cables, shopkeepers said their telephone service hadn’t been affected. Meanwhile five blocks south at the corner of Hopkins and Monterey Avenue, most of the merchants on the south side of the street said they suffered sporadic service failures, while across the street at the Elixir Salon, telephones worked throughout the week. 

Also several merchants and residents reported not losing service until Sunday or even later this week. 

Stachowski said the service failure likely hit different customers at different times because it took time for the water to seep through different lines in the cable. 

She added that malfunction of the air pressure system was rare. 

Neil Meyer, who doesn’t own a cell phone, has been traveling to his Berkeley office to make personal calls since his telephone service died Sunday. 

“I keep bumping into people who tried to call me,” he said.ª