A cellphone and Charter outage, which lasted the entire night Wednesday, was caused by a severed fiber-optic line, a Charter Communications press release stated.

The company said the outage affected all of its Albert Lea area customers. The outage reportedly occurred at 5:50 p.m. Wednesday when a fiber-optic line was severed by an unaffiliated third-party construction company conducting underground utility work.

“Charter crews responded immediately to locate the source of the cut and make the necessary repairs,” the release stated. “Services were restored for all customers by 2:15 a.m. (Thursday). We apologize for the inconvenience this caused our customers.”

The outage came as heavy rain moved into the area Wednesday night.

The company declined to say how many customers were affected.