'Blip' causes 50,000 homes to lose landline phone service
About 50,000 homes in Devon lost their landline connections on Tuesday after a power outage at a telephone exchange.
Properties in east, central and south Devon lost their service at about 14:00 BST. BT said most services were reconnected by 16:00 and all were reconnected by 19:15.
Devon and Cornwall Police sent a message on Twitter advising anyone affected to use a mobile phone.
A BT spokesman said the fault was due to a "power blip" at the exchange.
The outage affected equipment at Brixham Coastguard station, which was left without computer communications equipment for several hours.
The station said calls requiring such equipment were routed to other stations, and that search and rescue capabilities were not affected.
"There were no safety issues," Brixham Coastguard said.
Devon and Cornwall Police advised anyone affected to use a mobile phone if they needed to call 999, but said problems with the service were resolved 19:30.