LAKELAND — A widespread phone outage is affecting landline communications throughout much of the Tampa Bay area, including Polk County.

The Polk County School District and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office reported phone outages Wednesday morning.

Polk’s 911 center is operational, though officials said it’s best to use cellphones if possible until the landline phone service is operating properly.

“We are told that due to a system-wide outage with Frontier (Communications Company), some landline phone services are being affected,” the Sheriff’s Office said on its Facebook page. “We want to advise callers having any issue reaching us via 9-1-1 to please call us using a cell phone, as this seems to be counteracting the outage issue.”

According to a Facebook post by the School District, “Many schools and district offices are experiencing phone outages. Schools still have internet access and use of mobile phones. We are working with our service provider to get an update on repair time.”

Bay News 9 said the outage is widespread, affecting Hillsborough, Manatee and Pinellas counties as well. A number of law enforcement agencies and Tampa International Airport have reported phone problems.

The city of Sarasota said in a Facebook posting that, according to Frontier, the outage extends from Spring Hill, south to Punta Gorda, affecting some 200,000 customers.

 Eric Pera can be reached at eric.pera@theledger.com or 863-802-7528.