(Des Moines)– The Iowa Lottery says a change in ownership of some cell phone towers in northwest Iowa has knocked out service to its terminals at 48 retail sites in Lyon, O’Brien, Osceola and Sioux counties.
Lottery CEO Terry Rich says the problem developed over the weekend, making it unable for the affected retailers to sell lotto tickets or cash lotto or instant-scratch tickets. He says pull-tab tickets aren’t affected, as they aren’t cashed on the terminal.
As of late this (Mon.) afternoon, Rich says five of the impacted retailers had been switched to satellite hook-ups and were back-on line, but 43 locations were still out of service. He adds not all retailers in the four counties were affected by the outage.
Rich says the Iowa Lottery is working with its vendor and communications providers to get the affected terminals back up and running as soon as possible.
