Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam telegraphed his plans to dump rural landline service last summer.

You should believe Verizon Communications CEO Lowell McAdam when he says he intends to end wired telephone and broadband service for areas that are simply not economically feasible for fiber upgrades. McAdam’s grand plan is now coming true for customers in parts of Florida and on Fire Island, N.Y.

Last summer, Stop the Cap! covered McAdam’s comments to Wall Street investors (that are always the first to know) at the Guggenheim Securities Symposium:

“In […] areas that are more rural and more sparsely populated, we have got [a wireless 4G] LTE build that will handle all of those services and so we are going to cut the copper off there,” McAdam said. “We are going to do it over wireless. So I am going to be really shrinking the amount of copper we have out there and then I can focus the investment on that to improve the performance of it.”

The writing is already on the wall:

1. Verizon has been penalized and criticized in several states by public utility commissions for the ongoing degradation of its copper network. Verizon sees further investment in copper technology as throwing good money after bad, but spending millions on additional fiber upgrades isn’t appealing either. The result is deteriorating service. From downtown Manhattan to New Jersey to Maryland, D.C. and Virginia, Verizon’s service failures have left customers frustrated and sometimes waiting weeks or months for repair crews to turn up to restore basic phone service. Even more dangerous, Verizon was to blame for significant 911 network failures near the nation’s capital. Post Sandy, there are still sections of lower Manhattan without phone service nearly five months after the storm struck. Five months.
2. Verizon sold off telephone service in northern New England several years ago to FairPoint Communications, knowing full well Verizon never had an interest in upgrading any part of Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine to fiber service. In many smaller former GTE telephone areas too small to successfully argue a case for return on investment, Verizon decided selling those territories off was the best option. Hawaiian Telcom and Frontier Communications now own many of those former-Verizon territories.
3. Verizon has decreased marketing its wired DSL service and stopped selling it altogether to customers who want broadband-only service. That seems counter-intuitive for a company that recognizes future revenue possibilities come primarily from broadband and data services.

Traditionally, customers reporting trouble on a phone line get a visit from Verizon technicians who track the problem down and repair it. But Verizon no longer wants to spend money fixing copper wire-related problems. Customers reporting chronic phone static or outages are now being asked to abandon their traditional landline service instead:

• In areas where Verizon FiOS fiber is available, the company disconnects the customer from copper service and switches them to the FiOS fiber network. This also provides future marketing opportunities, pitching broadband and television service to accompany a customer’s home phone. 
• In areas where fiber upgrades are not forthcoming, the company now proposes to disconnect the customer in favor of Voice Link, a wireless home phone replacement. This also opens marketing opportunities for Verizon Wireless to pitch cell phones and wireless Internet service.

The end of an era.

Customers who live in Florida currently have a choice. During the trial, they can switch to Voice Link or keep their current landline service. On Fire Island, just south of Long Island, customers will not have that choice. Verizon is testing the will of New York regulators asked to allow the company to gradually abandon landline and wired Internet facilities on the island. Customers previously knocked out by Hurricane Sandy have no alternative — switch to a wireless option like Voice Link or lose  telephone service. As the network degrades further on the island, it is a safe bet more Fire Island residents will find themselves confronted with a wireless future courtesy of Voice Link.

Verizon is careful to note its Voice Link service comes at no additional cost to customers — their phone bills will remain the same, at least for now. But the transition includes several important caveats:

1. Voice Link is not subject to state or federal oversight or quality of service consumer protection laws that apply to traditional landline service;
2. The customer is responsible for providing an indoor space to mount the equipment (hardly unobtrusive, the receiver is eight inches tall) and provide electric power and AA batteries for battery backup;
3. Voice Link does not work with any data services including broadband or dial-up Internet, faxing, medical monitoring, alarm systems, etc. You will be pitched an expensive Verizon Wireless data plan if you want Internet access;
4. During recent severe storms, copper landline networks often continued to work but cell phone service failed over wide areas because of call congestion and  long-term power outages. Similar failures will leave Voice Link non-operational;
5. Voice Link customers lose DSL service and may have little chance of getting it back once they switch.

Verizon’s solution for Fire Island represents the long-term vision of McAdam coming to fruition. Complaining customers have not been able to persuade the company to abandon its plan, but New York State regulators might, if the issue gets enough attention.

In states with less aggressive regulators, Verizon could implement its Fire Island strategy nearly at-will, especially in rural service areas. Verizon’s plan differs little from that of AT&T, another major service provider seeking permission from regulators to abandon rural landline networks. AT&T is betting the Federal Communications Commission will approve AT&T’s “network transition plan” for all of its rural customers. Verizon is starting smaller, gradually implementing its transition under the radar of many state and federal officials.

AT&T wants to wind down its own rural landline network.

So why adopt Voice Link — a wireless solution, when copper wire network repairs remain a viable option?

The reasons are simple:

1. Voice Link is cheaper to run and maintain as a wireless service and uses existing Verizon Wireless cell towers;
2. Verizon can further cut their unionized workforce that maintains the company’s landline network;
3. Wireless products escape regulatory oversight;
4. The company can push customers to wireless data products that cost far more than wired DSL broadband service;
5. Verizon doesn’t have to upgrade the rest of their network to fiber.

Customers in Verizon service areas should appeal to regulators and their elected officials to stop the abandonment of wired infrastructure. Verizon argues maintaining its network doesn’t make sense when customers are fleeing their landlines. But rural customers are not disconnecting broadband service that travels across the same network. Even basic DSL is coveted in rural Verizon territories where Internet access remains unavailable. Just about everyone wants the option of FiOS fiber, perhaps the most coveted network upgrade around until Google announced its gigabit fiber project in Kansas City.

Nobody wants Verizon or AT&T to keep up its copper wire facilities indefinitely. But a better solution would be a regulatory mandate that requires Verizon and AT&T to gradually replace antiquated and failing copper infrastructure with fiber wherever possible. It is more than possible to do this on Fire Island. Verizon’s service area in Florida is hardly rural either. Verizon Florida (formerly GTE Telephone) serves Tampa-St. Petersburg east to Lake Wales, a major metropolitan region in central Florida.

What is best for shareholders should not be the final determining factor for an important utility service. If customers prefer the option of Voice Link for home phone service, there is nothing wrong with that. But wireless service as the only option customers have for broadband service? Not at Verizon Wireless’ prices.

Phillip “Do you want to depend on AT&T for phone service that could be gone with the wind for weeks?” Dampier

Superstorm Sandy is getting credit for exposing the thin veneer of the “wireless future” some phone companies want to give their most rural customers after disconnecting their home phone lines in favor of wireless service.

Unfortunately for the providers selling you on the wireless revolution, reality intruded last month when Category 1 Hurricane Sandy arrived. In its wake, the storm obliterated a significant amount of wireless phone service for weeks in some of the most urbanized sections of the country, while leaving underground, traditional wired phone service largely untouched.

The storm that blew into the northeastern U.S. Oct. 29 left a legacy of interrupted or inadequate cell service that lasted more than two weeks. AT&T and Verizon Wireless reported their networks were not fully restored until Nov. 15. Sprint and T-Mobile are still addressing some issues with their networks as of today.

Although the storm was enormous in scope, it was only a Category 1 hurricane. It could have been much worse.

So where did things go wrong?

Although some sites lost their wired backhaul connection which connects the tower to the provider, the biggest problem was commercial power interruption. Without power, many providers were caught flat-footed with inadequate on-site backup plans to keep cell towers up and running until regular power could be restored.

The wireless industry fought tooth and nail against common sense regulations proposed by the Federal Communications Commission after Hurricane Katrina devastated infrastructure and power facilities in southern Louisiana and Mississippi.

The FCC proposed that every cell tower be equipped with on site battery backup equipment that could sustain service for a minimum of eight hours — sufficient time for power to be restored or company engineers to arrive with more robust generators.

Providers howled about the cost of outfitting the nation’s 200,000 cell sites with even a conservative amount of backup power. The cellular industry lobbying group and Sprint sued, calling it a wasteful and unnecessary mandate. The Bush Administration eventually dropped the whole matter in November 2008 as part of its war on “burdensome” regulation.

Since then, providers have been free to design their own emergency backup plans, or have none at all. Few have made those detailed plans public, giving customers information about how likely their cell phone will work in the event of a disaster.

Verizon Wireless has been the most aggressive, voluntarily adopting the proposed FCC standards and outfitting all of their cell sites with a minimum of eight hours of battery backup power. Other providers have backup facilities at some sites, often with lower capacity batteries that won’t last as long.

Sandy illustrated that even eight hours might be inadequate. Many cell sites were on generator power for more than a week, assuming engineers could regularly reach each tower with equipment and fuel.

Other cell sites could not be returned to service immediately because of major wind damage or flooding. Those that were in service were often overburdened by enormous call volumes.

Meanwhile, unless your landline provider’s central office was flooded, your phone line kept working during and after the storm, especially if your neighborhood wiring is buried underground.

In many cases, it was the only thing working, because traditional phone lines are independently powered and not dependent on electric service in your home to operate. That is what kept your dial tone humming even as your smartphone’s battery ran out.

Ironically, the network that performed the best through the storm is the same one AT&T and Verizon would like to phase out, starting in rural areas. AT&T wants to completely abandon wired service in its most rural service areas, where calling and waiting for emergency assistance is already a hindrance. AT&T plans to spend billions to bolster its rural cell tower network to cover the landline areas it wants to abandon, but those communities would be entirely dependent on the reliability of that network, because AT&T’s competitors are unlikely to build additional infrastructure to compete.

As Sandy just demonstrated, if high-profit Manhattan customers could not be assured of reliable cell phone service from any company that provide service there, how likely is it that a customer in rural Kansas will be in real trouble summoning help over AT&T’s wireless infrastructure in the event of a cell tower failure, wiping out the only telecommunications service available in nearby towns?

AT&T is being fingered as the party responsible for rendering Oakland’s $18 million dollar P25 digital public safety radio communications system unreliable, because police and fire radios are often inoperable near the company’s cell towers.

After more than a year of repeated failures and complaints from Oakland police over garbled communications, dead spots, and reception problems, investigators dispatched from the Federal Communications Commission finally identified the source of most of the problems: AT&T.

“If the officer is in an area close to one of their cell sites, essentially the cell site overpowers their radios,” said David Cruise, Oakland’s public safety systems adviser.

The system, built by Harris Corporation of Melbourne, Fla. is suspected of being intolerant of strong cell signals operating on nearby frequencies. The digital nature of the system means degraded communications often go unheard, and firefighters and police officers have complained loudly and repeatedly they have been unable to summon dispatchers while experiencing interference problems. The investigation found the problems are worst within a quarter to a half-mile from one of AT&T’s many cell sites.

The source of the interference is AT&T’s 2G network, operated on 850MHz. Oakland’s public safety P25 system operates on multiple frequencies nearby from 851-854MHz.

Under federal law, public safety communications have priority over cell phone service, and AT&T has cooperated by shutting down 2G service on 850MHz on at least 16 cell towers, immediately reducing complaints from police officers and firefighters.

“AT&T would never do anything to jeopardize law enforcement,” AT&T spokesman John Britton told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This spectrum has been out there since the 1990s. Thursday or Friday was the first time we were notified by Oakland. We reacted quickly.”

AT&T won’t say exactly how many cell sites are located in Oakland, but there are more than 1,000 AT&T-owned towers across the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Oakland officials plan to press AT&T to shut down more 2G data service on 850MHz until a solution can be found.

AT&T says only customers with the oldest phones are likely to notice the network shutdowns, because most current customers use 3G or 4G data service, which has not posed an interference problem. AT&T says it still maintains 2G service in San Francisco on 1900MHz, which should be accessible to customers with older phones, although the service may not operate as well on the higher frequency band when obstructions are present between a cell phone user and the nearest cell tower.

Representatives for law enforcement personnel hope the city is on the right track, but point out the Harris-built digital radio system has been nothing but trouble since it was first activated. The system has suffered repeated glitches, does not work inside hundreds of area buildings, and failed the night President Obama visited Oakland in July. Some critics note the Harris system does not even provide reception in the basement of Oakland’s police headquarters.

City officials are also investigating other contributing potential sources of interference, including T-Mobile, which also operates on similar frequencies in the area.

Ironically, the interference problem may have begun after Sprint Nextel committed to spending over a billion dollars to cover the costs of relocating public safety communications further away from its own cellular frequencies. Sprint Nextel paid $10.5 million to move Oakland’s radio system to a frequency further from its own network, but as it turns out, closer to AT&T’s.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCBS San Francisco Oakland Police Radios Failed During Presidents Visit 7-26-12.mp4[/flv]

KCBS in San Francisco has been pursuing the dilemma of Oakland’s public safety communications system for months. Back in July, police were alarmed when the radio system failed the night President Obama arrived in town.  (3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCBS San Francisco Closer Look Oakland Police Fed Up With Flawed Radio System 8-14-12.mp4[/flv]

Oakland police are fed up with the year-old $18 million dollar emergency radio system that they say simply does not work. KCBS investigates in this mid-August report.  (4 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCBS San Francisco ATT Cellphone Towers Blamed For Oakland Police Radio Failures 8-21-12.mp4[/flv]

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission finally identified a major source of Oakland’s radio problems: AT&T cell sites.  (2 minutes)

Greenwich Village business owner Louis Wintermeyer has spent the last three months without phone or broadband service from Verizon Communications.

“It is hard to believe it has gone on this long,” Wintermeyer told the New York Post. “You feel like you’re in Bangladesh here. I mean we’re in the West Village!”

Across Manhattan, and well into upstate New York, Verizon customers who start experiencing landline problems often keep experiencing them for weeks or months on end.

Wintermeyer couldn’t wait that long — he relocated his car-export company to his Rockland County home. Another Verizon customer in the same building — the Darling advertising agency, experienced intermittent outages adding up to 10 weeks of no service since February.

“We really sounded like amateurs,” Jeroen Bours, president of the Darling advertising agency told the Post. “We would be in a conference call, and all of a sudden the call would go. It just doesn’t really make a good impression.”

In the Adirondack hamlet of Wanakena, when the rain arrives, Verizon service leaves a lot to be desired.

One person’s phone may be working but the one next door will be completely out of service or crackly at best, according to local residents.

“It’s almost comical,” Ranger school director Christopher L. Westbrook told the Watertown Daily Times. “It’s so bizarre because some phones will be working while others are not.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWNY Watertown Phone Situation Improving Officials Say 8-3-12.mp4[/flv]

A fiber optic line cut near Cicero, N.Y. in early August disrupted phone and cellular service from Verizon across the North Country. WWNY in Watertown covers the event.  (1 minute)

One Adirondack Park Agency commissioner who lives in the area says he has been without a phone 15 times in the last two months. Unfortunately for North Country residents, cell phone service is often not an option, because carriers don’t provide reliable wireless service in the region.

Local businesses cannot process credit card transactions, broadband service goes down, and a handful of privately-owned pay phones out of service for months have been abandoned by their independent owner because of the ongoing service problems.

Verizon repair crews come and go, but affected customers report a real reluctance by Verizon technicians to complete repairs once and for all.

“The permanent fix is not happening,” says Angie K. Oliver, owner of the Wanakena General Store.

Bours said one Verizon technician told him the company no longer cares about its older copper wire landline business. Rural residents upstate sense the company has little interest spending money on deteriorating infrastructure.

Some Wanakena residents suspect Verizon has thrown in the towel in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties, where independent Nicholville Telephone subsidiary Slic Network Solutions is constructing over 800 miles of fiber optic cable and operates a fiber to the home broadband and phone service.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWNY Watertown Lewis County Phone Service Restored 8-20-11.mp4[/flv]

Last summer, Lewis County suffered a similar widespread phone service outage that left businesses and homes without service for days.  WWNY says Barnes Corners was hardest hit.  (1 minute) 

Verizon spokesman John J. Bonomo blamed lightning strikes for the problems in Wanakena, but said the cable serving the area was intact and should not be responsible for service outages.

Gray

Near Syracuse University, some businesses and residents were without phone service for nearly two weeks in June.

The largest outage began when more than 150 customers around SU lost service after a storm. More than a week later, nearly two dozen customers were still without service, including the 4,000 member U.S. Institute for Theater Technology.

A damaged underground phone cable was deemed responsible, but repairs were slow.

Earlier this month, Massena town supervisor Joseph Gray fired off a letter to the deputy Secretary of State after a major Verizon line north of Syracuse was damaged, cutting off landline and cell phone service throughout Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties.

“I would have called your office to speak with you directly, but I couldn’t because our telephone service was unavailable,” Gray wrote. “Since I became supervisor of the town of Massena just over two and a half years ago, on at least three different occasions telecommunications in the entire North Country has been thrown into chaos because a Verizon fiber optic cable was cut 150 miles from here. Many of us found our emergency services, business, residential, and cellular telephone service interrupted, not to mention disabled credit card machines, facsimile machines and Internet service in some cases.”

Gray criticized the Public Service Commission for allowing Verizon to operate without service redundancy in the state, providing backup facilities if a fiber cut occurs.

“As a result, the Public Service Commission (which perhaps should be given a different name if my experiences with them is typical), has done nothing to address this dangerous situation and, more incredibly, appears unwilling to acknowledge that the problem exists,” Gray said.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman blasted Verizon’s poor landline service in a petition sent to the New York State Public Service Commission. Schneiderman called Verizon’s service unacceptable in New York, with customers forced to wait inordinate periods to get service restored.

“Verizon’s management has demonstrated that it is unwilling to compete to retain its wireline customer base, and instead is entirely focused on expanding its wireless business affiliate,” said Schneiderman’s office.

Schneiderman’s office filed evidence in July that Verizon was undercutting its landline business in New York and diverting money for other purposes:

• Verizon’s claim it had spent more than $1 billion in investments to its landline network was misleading: Roughly three-quarters of the money was actually spent on transport facilities to serve wireless cell sites and ongoing spending on FiOS in areas already committed to get the fiber-to-the-home service;
• Verizon investment in landlines has declined even faster than its line losses. The dollars per access line budgeted for 2012 is one-third less than the investment for the 2007-2009 period;
• In just a five month period, 19.5% of the company’s 4.3 million customer lines in New York required repair. This means every Verizon customer will need an average of one repair every five years;
• Verizon’s complaint rate with the PSC has exceeded the PSC’s own limit for good service every month since June 2010. Most recently, Verizon exceeded the limit by more than double the threshold;
• Verizon’s agreement with the Commission establishes two classes of customers: “core” customers (8%) that qualify for enhanced repair service because they are elderly and/or have medical problems and non-core customers (virtually everyone else). The Commission only enforces service standards and repair lapses with “core” customers, which are required to have out of service lines restored within 24 hours 80% of the time. Verizon is free to delay other repairs indefinitely without consequence.
• The PSC has already fined Verizon $400,000 earlier this year for poor service from October-December 2011.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWNY Watertown Gray Phone Disruptions Perilous Flaw 8-7-12.mp4[/flv]

WWNY talks with Massena town supervisor Joseph Gray, who has launched a campaign to force Verizon to develop a plan to better handle outages in northern New York. (2 minutes)

Pendleton County, W.V.

Pendleton County, W.V. residents are frustrated by another landline service outage afflicting Frontier Communications in the eastern panhandle region of the state.

The latest disruption began early Friday morning, leaving limited phone service throughout the county, with customers unable to dial any number that was not within the local 249 exchange.

Customers found cell phone service spotty, as it traditionally always is in the county, leaving some with no way to communicate and frayed nerves.

WHSV-TV reports Rosa Propst was extremely upset by the outage which dragged on for nearly two days. Propst’s father was hospitalized in another county and medical personnel could not reach her to report her father’s deteriorating medical condition.

Her ill father was also upset because he could not reach his daughter — or just about anyone else in Pendleton County over the weekend.

“I would have held Frontier responsible for not giving us an emergency services line where we could get to a hospital or call the hospital,” Propst told the station.

Frontier eventually found the problem — a series of fiber cuts over the length of 1,000 feet of cable. A Frontier spokesperson said the company had to replace about 7,000 feet of cable and had to find workers willing to climb 40 foot telephone poles in what was characterized as a rugged area.

Customers complained this was not the first significant outage for Frontier customers in the area.

The company eventually repaired service early Sunday morning.

Frontier has been accused of lacking network redundancy, letting phone companies bypass damaged lines by switching to backup infrastructure.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHSV Harrisonburg Customers in Pendleton County Frustrated Over Limited Phone Service 6-10-12.flv[/flv]

WHSV first reported the major service outage to viewers during the weekend local news, noting customers between Brandywine and Sugar Grove had lost landline service. (2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHSV Harrisonburg Family in Pendleton County Frustrated Over Phone Service 6-12-12.flv[/flv]

 In this second report, WHSV talks with the Propst family about the human impact extended service outages can have on customers.  (2 minutes)