The general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission predicts your landline will stop working within the next ten years, abandoned by companies like AT&T and Verizon in favor of wireless service in rural America or fiber (if you are lucky) in the cities.

Phillip “Did you know your landline will be dead within ten years?” Dampier

Sean Lev, the FCC’s general counsel, said in a blog post that “we should do everything we can to speed the way while protecting consumers, competition, and public safety.”

But the FCC seems to be abdicating its responsibility to do exactly that by singing the same song some of America’s largest phone companies have hummed since they decided to get out of the copper landline business for fun and profit.

Traditional boring telephone service is regulated as a utility — a guaranteed-to-be-available service for any American who wants it. Hundreds of millions of Americans do, especially in rural areas where America’s cell phone love affair is tempered by dreadful reception, especially in mountainous areas. Oh, and the nearest cable company is ten miles away.

AT&T and Verizon — two of America’s direct descendants of the Bell System, just don’t want to pay to keep up a network most of urban America doesn’t seem to want or need anymore. In addition to a dwindling customer base, providing a regulated legacy service means having to answer to unions and government-types who make sure employees are fairly compensated and customers are given reasonable service at a fair price. The alternatives on offer from AT&T and Verizon carry no such regulatory (or union) baggage. Prices can change at will and customers have no guarantee they will receive service or have someone to complain to if that service is sub-standard.

While in the past regulators have taken the lead to make sure telephone companies meet their obligations, the new FCC seems to spend most of its time observing the business agendas of the companies themselves.

Lev implied to the Associated Press the FCC is not exactly leading the parade on the future of landlines. He seems more comfortable trying to analyze the intentions of AT&T and Verizon’s executives:

Most phone companies aren’t set to retire their landline equipment immediately. The equipment has been bought and paid for, and there’s no real incentive to shut down a working network. He thinks phone companies will continue to use landlines for five to 10 years, suggesting that regulators have some time to figure out how to tackle the issue.

Lev

AT&T is more direct: It wants to switch off all of its landline service, everywhere, by 2020. Customers will be given a choice of wireless or U-verse in urban areas and only wireless in rural ones. Where U-verse doesn’t serve, AT&T DSL customers will be in the same boat as Verizon customers on Fire Island: pick an expensive wireless data plan, satellite fraudband, or go without.

Verizon prefers a “gradual phase-out” according to Tom Maguire, Verizon’s senior vice president of operations support.

Verizon claims it has no plans to shut down working service for customers, but it does not want to spend millions to continue to support infrastructure fewer customers actually use. That means watching the gradual deterioration of Verizon’s copper-based facilities, kept in service until they inevitably fail, at which point Verizon will offer to “restore service” with its Voice Link wireless product instead.

For voice calls, that may suffice for some, especially those comfortable relying on cell technology already. But at a time when the United States is already struggling with a rural broadband problem, abandoning millions of rural DSL customers only makes rural broadband an even bigger challenge. The wireless alternative is too variable in reception quality, too expensive, and too usage capped.

Island residents are smoking hot about Voice Link

The New York Public Service Commission has extended the deadline for public comments about the Voice Link wireless landline replacement until Sept. 13, to give the growing number of customers on Fire Island with the service enough time to fully evaluate it over the summer months.

To date nearly 400 public comments have been filed with the Commission, every one of them negative.

Stop the Cap!’s comments are having an impact on the PSC’s exploration of the deployment of Voice Link in upstate New York. On our recommendation, the PSC has formally asked Verizon for more documentation about how Voice Link is being introduced in the Catskills:

Please provide the following information for all Voice Link devices/services that have been installed at any customer premises locations outside of the Western Fire Island area:

• The address of every Voice Link customer in upstate New York;
• Date Voice Link Installed;
• Reason Voice Link Installed;
• Was customer advised Voice Link service was optional or not;
• Voice Link Service Calls/Repairs identified by location, date, reason for service visit, repair action taken;
• If applicable to any locations, date Voice Link was uninstalled/disconnected and reason for termination;
• Please provide any marketing materials, scripts, and/or training materials in use by Verizon employees or contracted third-party workers to inform customers about Voice Link service;
• Please provide copies of any documentation provided to customers agreeing to accept Voice Link service outside of Western Fire Island, including Terms of Service Agreements. If there are any material differences between documentation and Terms of Service agreements for Western Fire Island customers, and customers in any other areas of New York State, please identify and explain those differences.

The PSC is also demonstrating that it is willing to go deep into the weeds with Verizon on this issue, a marked departure from the near-rubber stamp “light touch” regulation AT&T enjoys in several midwestern and southern states. At one point, the Commission found Verizon documentation indicating enough “spare pairs” — unused lines — were available that could be used to repair and reintroduce landline service on Fire Island, and wants to know why Verizon is not using them to bring back the service customers had before Hurricane Sandy did its damage:

The copper cable table shows that the spare cable pairs in the copper cable facilities serving the 11 identified communities is approximately 16% of the total available pairs in those cables. However, in specific communities such as Fair Harbor, Kismet, Robins Rest and Lonelyville, the percentage of spare pairs ranges from 21% to 66% of the total available pairs. Also, the number of working pairs in many locations is small compared to the total available pairs in the cables, despite the number of defective pairs reported by the company. Please explain why Verizon is not utilizing existing spare cable pairs, and performing routine cable maintenance in any communities, to restore wireline services to customers that do not request or desire Voice Link service.

The fiber cable table shows spare cable pairs in the fiber facilities serving the Ocean Beach, Lonelyville, Fair Harbor and Kismet communities is approximately 73% of the total available pairs in those fiber cables. By individual community, the percentage of spare pairs ranges from 62% to 94% of the total available pairs. Please explain why Verizon is not utilizing existing spare fiber pairs in any of the four named communities to restore wireline services to customers that do not request or desire Voice Link service.

Despite every effort by Verizon, Fire Island residents that lost landline service are increasingly opposed to Voice Link, if the public comments filed with the Commission are any indication.

The Point o’Woods Association on Fire Island, which represents more than 500 people who either seasonally or year round depend on Verizon’s landline network, is also highly critical of Voice Link’s performance and provided the Commission with very specific and detailed criticisms:

1. Verizon’s only cell site on Fire Island on the Ocean Beach water tower lacks reliable power backup contingencies;
2. Fire and medical first responders across Fire Island have declared Voice Link unsatisfactory for public safety;
3. Voice Link’s performance has been called unreliable. The sound is “plagued by echoes, connection delays, no connection at all, and frequent dropped calls;”
4. Voice Link only works with CDMA spectrum for voice calling, reducing the level of service (data) customers used to have with traditional landlines;
5. Customers cannot reach a live operator by dialing “0” and must dial all ten digits for all calls. The service also does not support collect calls, a feature “sometimes critical in emergency situations;”
6. The reception quality of Verizon’s data network varies widely across the island.

“Voice Link at its very best is a temporary solution suitable for deployment only while full communications infrastructure is in the process of restoration,” concludes D.R. Brown, vice president of the association.

The changes Verizon seeks for Fire Island are affecting even those who still have landline service. Customers regularly report that Verizon customer service is refusing repair requests in areas like Ocean Beach, pushing customers to the wireless replacement it wants them to accept.

Jean Ufer, a Fire Island resident, says Verizon is threatening the health of her husband by refusing to fix her service.

“They will not repair my landline, which my husband really needs, as he has a pacemaker which has to be monitored by a landline,” Ufer complained to the Commission. “They also refused to connect my DSL, even though they charged me  the monthly fee right through the winter.”

Schneiderman

The New York Attorney General has some strong words for Verizon Communications:

“Verizon [must] divest those portions of its New York franchise where it is no longer willing to continue providing wireline service and replace Verizon with another carrier that will provide wireline service.”

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is more than a little concerned with Verizon’s plans to abandon offering landline service on the western half of Fire Island and potentially other areas further upstate to satisfy the company’s wireless business strategy.

In a hostile 13-page filing directed to the New York Public Service Commission, Schneiderman’s office accused Verizon of abdicating its responsibility to provide universal access to high quality landline service in favor of moving customers to inferior Verizon Wireless service.

“Verizon is asking the Commission to depart from a century of telephone service regulation, which had as one of its fundamental principles, universal wireline telephone service for all customers,” Schneiderman wrote.

In return for a guaranteed monopoly, profits, and a secure franchise area across portions of New York, telephone companies like Verizon historically agreed to offer phone service to any customer who wanted it. State and federal universal service rules provided subsidies to phone companies to reach their most rural or expensive-to-reach customers.

The goal, Schneiderman argued, was for every resident in New York to have home phone service, enabling them to communicate with their doctors, families, schools, friends and businesses, as well as to send for police, fire and ambulance assistance in an emergency.

Verizon’s intended replacement, Voice Link, represents a downgrade in service even worse than hundred-year old copper wire “plain old telephone service,” according to the attorney general. Schneiderman called Verizon’s Voice Link inferior and its thick 10-page terms, conditions, and disclaimers “legalistic,” leaving consumers without services they previously received or imposing significant new burdens and obligations.

The issues cited by Schneiderman:

Voice Link Service “is not compatible with fax machines, DVR services, credit card machines, medical alert or other monitoring services or some High Speed or DSL Internet services.” Customers in western Fire Island and other rural parts of New York have no FiOS or cable modem Internet providers to switch to, so those who rely on these services have no alternatives if switched to Voice Link.

Because Voice Link “may not be compatible with certain monitored home security systems,” customers’ homes and businesses will be at greater risk from flooding by burst plumbing, fire or burglars. In the case of plumbing emergencies, visit Carlson Plumbing Company website for reliable solutions and prompt support.

Although wireline customers whose service is suspended for nonpayment can still reach a 911 operator in emergencies, suspension of Voice Link “will prevent ALL Service, including any 911 dialing and associated emergency response services. Customers may also lose the ability to receive or place calls, even to 911, if they fail to “promptly notify Verizon” of a change in their address, email, or credit card expiration date.

Customers must “defend, indemnify and hold harmless Verizon from and against all claims … for infringement of any intellectual property rights arising from use of Voice Link or its software.”

Voice Link Service “does not allow the Customer to make 500, 700, 900, 950, 976, 0, 00, 01, 0+, calling card or dial-around calls (e.g., 10-10-XXXX),” so customers will be unable to use such pay-per-call information services. Voice Link Service “does not allow the Customer to accept collect calls or third number billed calls. The Company will not bill any charges on behalf of other carriers. [Customers] must have an International Calling Plan in order to make international calls. Wireline customers are able to subscribe to toll and international calling plans provided by other carriers, and have these and other third-party service charges included on their Verizon bills.

Verizon Voice Link

Voice Link Service “is subject to the availability of adequate wireless coverage throughout your home, and is not available in all locations.”

Unlike wireline service, which supplies its own power over the copper wiring, Voice Link uses customers’ house current to operate. Verizon has not disclosed how much customers’ electric utility bills will increase to power the Voice Link device. Also, if electric power is interrupted, Customers may have to “reset or reconfigure equipment prior to using” Voice Link. This may be difficult for some physically limited or technologically unsophisticated customers to perform.

During power interruptions, the wireless Devices used in Voice Link are battery operated. Although the Devices include a rechargeable battery back-up that provides only 36 hours of standby power and up to 2.5 hours of talk time in the event of a commercial power outage, “[a ]fter the battery is exhausted, the Service (including 911 dialing) will not function until power is restored.”

After the expiration of a one year replacement warranty for the battery back-up included with customers’ wireless Device, customers “are responsible for replacing the back-up battery as needed,” but Verizon has not disclosed the cost of such replacement batteries.

Wireline customers purchase their own telephones from competitive manufacturers, but the Voice Link device is only supplied by Verizon, which continues to own it. Thus, customers will have to pay Verizon to repair the device if “such repair or maintenance is made necessary due to misuse, abuse or intentional damage to the Device.” Verizon has not disclosed what [the] repair or replacement might cost customers in such event.

When wireline customers end their service with Verizon, they have no equipment to return to the company. However, Voice Link customers who cancel their service “are responsible for returning their Wireless Device to [Verizon] in an undamaged condition. Failure to return the Device within 30 days … may result in [Verizon] charging [customers] an unreturned equipment fee.” Verizon has not disclosed the amount of this fee.

Schneiderman accused Verizon of dragging its feet on repairs on Fire Island and forcing Voice Link on customers as the only available alternative.

“It is clear that Verizon is leveraging the storm damage from Sandy as part of its long-term strategy to abandon its copper networks by substituting Voice Link for [landline] service on western Fire Island and forcing customers to accept wireless Voice Link wherever it does not build FiOS,” Schneiderman argued. “Verizon’s failure to make prompt repairs to its Fire Island facilities during the seven months following Sandy left the Commission little choice but to provide temporary approval of Voice Link so that customers would have some form of telephone service during the 2013 summer beach season. However, this ‘temporary approval’ should not be expanded to allow Verizon to avoid its obligations permanently, on Fire Island or anywhere else in New York.”

Schneiderman wants the PSC to force the issue with Verizon, and not on the preferred terms of its senior executives.

“Rather than allow Verizon to provide inadequate Voice Link service to Fire Island and other New York customers, the Commission should compel the company to either maintain its wireline network throughout its franchise territory or sell
those parts where it is unwilling to do so to another provider that will provide adequate service,” Schneiderman wrote.

New York State residents have until July 2 to share their views about a proposal by Verizon Communications that would allow the company to drop landline service in rural upstate New York and other locations and replace it with a wireless substitute — Voice Link, as its sole service offering.

Stop the Cap! has covered the issue of rural landline service extensively since 2008. In the past few years, while CenturyLink, Windstream, FairPoint, and Frontier have developed business plans to sell lucrative landline telephone and broadband service in rural areas, AT&T and Verizon have proposed abandoning their landline networks in certain areas in favor of wireless.

Verizon has sought to stop offering rural landline service in areas where it feels no longer economically justified providing it. It ultimately means dismantling communications infrastructure that has provided reliable voice telephone service for more than 100 years.

Voice Link is first being introduced as Verizon’s “sole service” for beleaguered residents living on the western half of Fire Island, which was devastated by last fall’s Hurricane Sandy. Verizon does not want to foot the bill to rebuild and repair the damaged copper wire infrastructure and does not believe installing its fiber optic network FiOS is economically justified either. That leaves residents with one option for basic phone service: Voice Link.

Unfortunately, many of the residents now encountering Voice Link have told the Public Service Commission it has proven unreliable or unsatisfactory and represents a downgrade from the landline service they used to have. (Stop the Cap! has repeatedly offered to test Voice Link’s workability and sound quality ourselves, but Verizon has not taken us up on that offer.)

The company does admit Voice Link is incompatible with basic data services, which means Verizon customers using Voice Link will lose DSL and dial-up Internet access. It also does not work with fax machines, home alarms, and medical monitoring services. Verizon has promised to address these issues in the future, but has offered no timeline or guarantees. Instead, it suggests customers consider purchasing added-cost services from Verizon Wireless, which could cost some residents hundreds of dollars a month for phone and broadband service.

Stop the Cap! believes Voice Link should be offered only as an optional service for customers who wish to use it. In its current form, it is unsuitable, unproven, and insufficient to serve as Verizon’s sole offering, particularly when the company is the carrier of last resort for many rural residents, as well as those on Fire Island.

At the very least, Verizon must be compelled to offer an equal or better level of service, not diminish it. That means better voice quality, rock solid cell coverage, an equivalently priced, unlimited wireless broadband service option for DSL customers, and compatibility with the data services that are now supported over the plain old telephone network.

The Commission should also explore the true costs of repairing and/or replacing wired infrastructure before allowing the company to dismantle it. Once the wired infrastructure is removed, the costs to provision rural New York with fast, reliable, wired broadband service in the future will become prohibitive. Wireless service is no panacea for rural New York, where coverage issues abound, especially in the mountainous areas upstate and across the rolling hills of the Southern Tier. Verizon’s lawyers admitted as much when they wrote the terms and conditions governing Voice Link and other wireless services, walking away from significant liability if calls to 911 go unconnected:

“In the absence of gross negligence or willful misconduct by Verizon, our liability to you, to anyone dialing 911 using the Service, or to any other person or party, for any loss or damage arising from any acts, errors, interruptions, omissions, delays, defects, or failures of 911 services or emergency personnel, whether caused by our negligence or otherwise, shall not exceed the amount of our charges for such Services during the affected period of time. This limitation of liability is in addition to any other limitations contained in this Agreement.”

In other words, Verizon’s only responsibility is to credit your account for the time you could not reach 911 or your call summoning help was dropped. You will see that credit reflected on a future bill, assuming you are still among the living when the emergency is over.

We strongly urge our fellow New Yorkers to share their personal views about Voice Link as a landline substitute with the PSC. This issue is important not only to Fire Island but to the rest of rural upstate New York as well, particularly pertaining to whether customers will have broadband service or not. Verizon management has clearly stated their agenda is to retire copper landline service and replace it with wireless in non-FiOS areas deemed too costly or unprofitable to keep up or upgrade.

Sharing your views is fast and easy and can be done in several ways. Be sure to reference “Matter/Case: 13-00986/13-C-0197” in your comments and include your contact information. All submissions will become publicly viewable on the Commission’s website under the “Public Comments” tab. You can find submissions from Stop the Cap! there as well.

Write (U.S. Mail):

Hon. Jeffrey C. Cohen, Acting Secretary
New York State Public Service Commission
Three Empire State Plaza
Albany, New York 12223-1350

E-Mail:

[email protected]

Online Comments:

You can post comments directly to the Commission’s Document and Matter Management System (DMM). Choose the “Post Comments” link on the upper-right of your screen. An online submission form will appear asking for your contact information. You can include your comments in the provided text box on that form or attach a .PDF, .DOC, or .TXT file.

Attention broadband planners: Although broadband deployment strategies differ around the world, a new report decisively concludes there is only one network technology proven to meet the demands of broadband users both today and tomorrow: a national fiber optic network.

BuddeComm’s new report, “Global Broadband – Fibre is the Infrastructure Required for the Future,” looked at every technology from variations of DSL, cable broadband, satellite, and wireless and found only fiber optics capable of handling the capacity of data and applications that will be required to run cities and countries from today onwards.

The report found that fiber optic deployment faced a range of challenges, despite its obvious technological advantages. Political obstacles are among the biggest roadblocks facing fiber networks. A combination of concerns about the cost of wiring service to procrastination has held back many national broadband improvement projects, including those in Australia and New Zealand. Incumbent commercial providers in North America have also actively attempted to block public fiber networks to protect their own commercial interests.

BuddeComm concludes America’s biggest broadband problems come as a result of incumbent providers exercising undue market power and influence over elected officials to protect their commercial interests at the price of the public good.

The report concludes that decisive political leadership is essential to overcome many of the artificial obstacles which slow down or stop fiber broadband deployments.

“One can argue endlessly about what technologies should be applied and at what cost, but we believe that all signs point to Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks as the best future-proof solution,” the report concludes. “One can debate about whether it is needed in five, ten or fifteen years – and again that depends on some of the differences between countries – but in the end FTTH is the best final solution for all urban and many regional premises.”

The 21st century digital economy is powered by robust broadband, and growing demands for faster speeds are coming from the healthcare, energy, media and retail sectors. Healthcare uses include file transfers of high-definition medical imagery and teleconferencing. Smart Grid technology is being deployed by many power companies to develop more efficient means of distributing and conserving energy. Media and mass entertainment providers are moving to high bandwidth online video, and the retail economy markets products and services over modern broadband networks.

The implications for the global economy are enormous. More than 120 countries have formal broadband policies and many consider high-speed Internet access a national priority. In the last century, North America and western Europe were considered the dominant economic players, in part because they established and maintained infrastructure to support their manufacturing and service economies. But many of these countries are falling far behind in the 21st century digital economy, where countries like Japan and Korea, parts of eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and Scandinavia are taking the lead in infrastructure deployment.

“Broadband infrastructure is perceived by all to be critical for the development of the digital economy, healthcare, education, e-government and so on,” the report notes. “From a financial and investment point of view broadband infrastructure should be treated as utility infrastructure.”

The interests of the private sector are not always aligned with the public interest, particularly when it comes to spending capital on upgrading network infrastructure. The report recommends that governments step in and build a public fiber highway system on which all providers can offer services.

“A National Broadband Network (NBN) should be based upon an open network as this makes it possible to offer the basic infrastructure on a utility basis to content and service providers,” the report concludes.

The governments of Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and others are already moving in that direction, setting up broadband authorities to build fiber infrastructure dismissed as too expensive or unnecessary by commercial providers who answer first to financial markets, shareholders, and private banks.

Under most NBN plans, providers get access to the fiber network at wholesale rates and help recoup its cost.

Australia’s National Broadband Network is on the way.

Where politicians answer to the whims of the private sector before considering the public good, the report finds:

• Private cable companies, particularly in North America, will continue to support and incrementally upgrade their HFC networks, but new cable operators are more likely to deploy fiber at the outset, not coaxial copper cable. Network costs, efficiencies, and reliability are all in fiber’s favor. In Europe, cable broadband is regularly losing market share to faster fiber technology. The share of all broadband subscribers held by HFC networks across Europe fell from 26% in 2002 to about 11% by mid-2013;
• Private telephone companies that do not face robust competition will continue to rely on their existing DSL networks. In cities and larger towns, expect phone companies to eventually upgrade to VDSL fiber-to-the-neighborhood (and its variants) in the largest markets with the most competition. Rural areas will continue to receive less robust DSL service, particularly where no cable competitor provides service;
• Rural areas may receive fixed wireless or satellite broadband service, but this is not a solution for more populated areas.

Although the global economic downturn stalled many fiber network deployments and suppressed demand, the report finds broadband usage and demand for faster speeds are quickly accelerating. Some other highlights:

• Asia continues to be the leader in fiber optic deployment;
• Sufficient customer demand to make the investment in fiber worthwhile is increasingly likely once fiber service becomes widely available in countries like the Netherlands, China, France, Israel, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden;
• International connectivity in Africa remains a challenge, but fiber bandwidth is expected to more than double by 2014;
• The Middle East will see rapid growth in fiber broadband once international capacity constraints are eased.

Obtaining a copy of the full BuddeComm report is prohibitively expensive for consumers, priced at $995.