Verizon Communications and AT&T together represent the largest providers of legacy copper wire landline phone service in the United States.  Over the past ten years, the traditional landline business has taken a beating as consumers increasingly turn their backs on the technology Alexander Graham Bell helped invent more than 100 years ago.  No utility service faces more customer defections than the phone company, and providers are increasingly rewriting their business models or lobbying to abandon unprofitable service areas altogether.

For some customers, investments in network improvements have brought advanced fiber optics straight to the home.  But in smaller communities, customers are making due with a deteriorating network phone companies no longer want to maintain.

The Glorious Growth Years

Back in the late 1980s, before most of us realized there was an Internet (or that you might be able to access it from home), the concept of connecting computers together to share information meant buying a 300-1200bps modem and using your home phone line to dial up hobbyist computer bulletin boards, CompuServe, PeopleLink, Delphi, GEnie, and QuantumLink.

Landline service was never perfect, but it worked reliably enough to make and receive phone calls and connect to low speed data networks.  As the 1990s arrived, an explosion in data and wireless services would bring both growth and unprecedented challenges for traditional telephone companies. Businesses demanded access to additional phone lines to power dedicated data lines and fax machines.  Residential customers wanted extra phone lines as well, mostly to keep data traffic off the primary house line. It was the era of frenzied area code splits, cell phones for all, and talk America could even run out of seven digit phone numbers to assign to all of the new lines.

As revenue and earnings exploded with the installation of new voice, data, and fax lines, Wall Street investors soon took notice.  Sleepy and safe phone company stocks were suddenly hot, and a deregulation-fueled consolidation frenzy soon resulted as phone companies merged and acquired one another.  Among the Bell System operating companies, familiar names like NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, Ameritech, and US West were gone, replaced by AT&T, Qwest, and Verizon.  Independent phone companies were not immune to the merger and acquisition game.  Today’s largest independent phone companies including Frontier Communications, CenturyLink, FairPoint, and Windstream have all grown mostly through buyouts of other providers.

The Bottom Drops Out

The rapid growth years of the traditional wired phone line came to an end around the same time as the dot.com crash and accompanying recession from 2000-2002.  While cell phone growth would continue, new competitors — especially cable-delivered “digital phone” service and other Voice Over IP providers like Vonage seriously cut into market share and revenue.  The need for additional phone lines to access the Internet subsided with the growth of DSL and cable broadband.  As household income stagnated, choices began to be made about where to cut back, and the traditional landline was a popular favorite.  Why pay for both a landline and a cell phone?  The cell phone stayed, the landline went.  Even dedicated fax machines are increasingly deemed unnecessary in an e-mail world.

The growing realization that the traditional copper wire telephone line was at risk of being the next “horse and buggy business” forced companies to consider a handful of options: ride out the landline declines and lower shareholder expectations, transform their existing networks to sustain new products like faster broadband and television service to give customers reasons to stay, or transition focus on business customers who bring more revenue.

AT&T and Verizon have adopted all three strategies, depending on where customers happen to live.

AT&T: If You are Still Waiting for DSL From Us, Forget It

In October, John J. Stephens, chief financial officer and executive vice-president at AT&T made it clear to investors the company’s interest in growing its legacy wired business had come to an end.  The company had lost landline customers for years, most switching to cell phone alternatives, sometimes sold by AT&T itself.  Spending enormous sums to upgrade AT&T’s copper landline network just didn’t make financial sense in every area.  Instead, AT&T split its operating territories in two: those suitable for upgrades to the company’s U-verse/IP platform, and those in smaller communities who will soon find themselves pushed to switch to AT&T wireless service instead.  That makes the prospects for customers still waiting for wired DSL service from AT&T pretty dim.

“We’ll continue to focus on transforming [existing] DSL lines into high speed [U-verse].” Stephens said. “In those areas where we don’t have U-verse, I think our plans have been fairly clear. We expect to have an LTE [wireless mobile broadband] rollout to 97% of the country. […] We believe that’s going to be able to provide a wireless solution at a high speed, good quality, good cost on a profitable basis for us. That’s the long-term solution to the non-U-verse areas.”

AT&T’s lobbyists have signaled this agenda for years, pressing state and federal lawmakers to get rid of “universal service” requirements that mandate reliable, basic landline telephone service to any customer in their service area who requests it.  AT&T wants the definition of “basic telephone service” expanded to allow the company the option of discontinuing its landline network and selling rural residents cell phone service instead.  The expense associated with maintaining AT&T’s degrading copper wire network is always cause for grumbling on Wall Street, most recently after this year’s repair costs from storms that impacted some of AT&T’s service areas.  Storm damages brought outages in the southern United States, flooded regions along the Mississippi, and rained-out areas of California.

Those problems were exacerbated when AT&T’s repairs don’t always correct the problems.  Repeated outages blamed on inadequate repairs and investment brought negative publicity for the phone company, as well as a number of requests to disconnect service as customers find other providers.

In places where AT&T will never deploy U-verse, AT&T has been content asking lawmakers to ease up on the phone company, urging that minimum service standards and oversight be abolished, along with the power of regulators to fine the company for repeated transgressions.  AT&T argues increased competition makes regulation unnecessary.

AT&T’s bean counters have calculated investment in U-verse only makes sense in urban-suburban areas.  In more distant suburbs and rural areas, the return on investment isn’t fast enough to justify spending money up-front on service improvements.  Maintaining the decades-old landline network doesn’t make much sense to AT&T either.  Instead, the company sees wireless service as the best prospect to serve its rural customers (and deliver the company higher profits from the more expensive service plans that come with the phones).

“What I see happening with LTE and data is just a huge growth opportunity,” said Ralph de la Vega, CEO and president of AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets. “We mentioned today that our smartphones now make up 52% of our postpaid base. But I think the way we need to think about smartphones in the future is the smartphone is going to equal the phone in the future. It will be 100% in the next 2 or 3 years. These devices are so good and the costs are coming down so much that I think in the future, you could look at close to 100% penetration.”

Some customers may find AT&T penetrating their wallets, but for the phone company, better days may be ahead:

• Moving customers to the wireless platform exposes them to higher revenue, higher-priced wireless service plans;
• Basic cell phones, which come with lower-priced voice plans are being increasingly replaced with smartphones which come with required, extra-cost data plans;
• Getting rid of the rural landline network slashes AT&T’s upkeep costs and holds customers in place with two-year service contracts common with wireless phones.

Consumers happy with their existing landline service may be less than impressed with AT&T’s cellular network coverage, its dropped call-problem, and the company’s alternative for rural broadband – heavily usage-capped and expensive LTE network access.  AT&T sells wired DSL plans for as little as $14.95 a month with a 150GB usage limit.  AT&T’s wireless LTE network will cost considerably more and is accompanied with usage limits a fraction of that amount.

Verizon: A Tale of Two Networks

Big Red has two wired landline networks: screaming fast FiOS fiber to the home for some, slow speed DSL over a decrepit copper wire network for everyone else.

Verizon is less opaque than AT&T regarding which service areas it treats as valued assets and which aren’t worth the time of day.  The company began selling off its undesirable customers several years ago, starting with Hawaii.  Northern New England was next, followed by several former GTE territories Verizon acquired in 2000.

While Verizon enjoyed the proceeds of the tax-free transactions, most of the impacted customers did not.  Hawaiian Telcom floundered for a few years with bad service and an outrageous debt load before declaring bankruptcy.  Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont suffered through a year-long transition to buyer FairPoint Communications, complete with poor service and notoriously inaccurate billing before that company also declared bankruptcy.  Former Verizon customers in the Pacific Northwest, Indiana, and West Virginia (among others) are coping with Frontier Communications own billing and service problems.

The FairPoint Trust called the $2.3 billion acquisition of Verizon’s New England operations “disastrous.”  It also echoed what Verizon obviously understood itself: its landline operation in New England had been allowed to deteriorate into “inferior assets that had no future.”

Frontier Communications itself judged the network it purchased from Verizon in West Virginia in need of serious upgrades and repairs.  Critics of the deal called Verizon’s West Virginia network “a technical disaster area.”

But while Verizon is capable of landline neglect, it is also the only major phone company delivering true fiber-to-the-home service over its award winning (and expensive to build) FiOS network.

The feast or famine approach Verizon has used for capital investments has resulted in amazing service for some, a loss of reliable service to many others.

FiOS has allowed Verizon to remain a serious player, particularly in the northeast, despite the onslaught of competition from Cablevision, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable.  Average revenues earned from FiOS customers are much higher than what the company earns from customers on its copper wire telephone network.

Some Verizon shareholders have never liked the price for the company’s fiber future.  When the economy tanked in late 2008, an indefinite suspension of FiOS expansion soon followed, leaving Verizon’s network expansion plans in limbo.  The company is still slowly completing the portion of its fiber network promised under existing agreements, but has avoided introducing the service in new cities and towns.  At the same time, Verizon is loathe to maintain investment in its antiquated copper wire landline network, which in some areas was supposed to be retired in favor of FiOS.

As long as Verizon’s older network can be held together, with fingers crossed, customers still have a dial tone.  But when things start to fail, customers are in for serious headaches.  They are popping aspirin almost daily at Bistro Chat Noir, a prestigious French restaurant along Madison Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.  If you plan to dine there, it is best to bring cash.  Even if the management wanted to take your Visa or Mastercard, the restaurant’s phone lines are out so often, they can’t easily process your payment.

These days, the resourceful owners rely on a neighbor’s graciously shared Wi-Fi connection (presumably powered by competitor Time Warner Cable) to process credit card transactions manually.

The New York Times wrote Verizon’s atrocious level of service isn’t isolated to one bistro:

“Obviously, this is not the way we want to do business,” said Ms. Latapie, who has started giving clients her personal cellphone number to avoid missing reservations when the restaurant’s phone is not performing properly. “When people can’t get through, I tell them it’s Verizon. And if they live in this area, they know — because they have the same problem.”

However irritating, sporadic utility failures are not uncommon. But along a a stretch of Madison Avenue in what is arguably the city’s most expensive shopping and eating district, phone and Internet blackouts have become a nightmarish routine of life for many expensive restaurants, stores and hotels.

For weeks now, mundane tasks — making dinner reservations and paying for purchases by credit card — have become a frustrating challenge.

“We are in the highest rent district in North America and we don’t have communication,” said Jillian Wright, whose spa on East 66th Street is on the second floor of a brownstone building and not ideal for walk-ins. Ms. Wright said she was losing clients daily, and her spa’s phone number goes straight to a voicemail message apologizing to clients for Verizon’s service.

The service failures have affected dozens of businesses, primarily in the East 60s along Madison Avenue. The scope of the problem varies, with some businesses having no phone or Internet service at all for the past several weeks and others experiencing blackouts that last days or a few hours.

Meetings with Verizon officials have deteriorated into spin-and-excuse sessions where company officials promise results but continue to deliver lousy service.  It turns out the problem is Verizon’s ancient copper wiring found underneath the streets in the area.  Just two feet away from Verizon’s cables are steam heating pipes, which warm the tunnels and create major condensation problems.  Couple that with water runoff from the streets above — salt-laden in the winter time — and you have a recipe for corrosion that destroys reliable phone service.

Eventually, Verizon plans to wire FiOS fiber across a large section of Madison Avenue, but with the company’s unwillingness to invest appropriate sums to get the job done, business and residential customers are simply kept waiting.

Or they can switch to Time Warner Cable, and many are.

Your Telephone Is Temporarily Out of Service…

Verizon’s service woes are not just for big city dwellers.  Residents in Virginia are coping with Verizon landline problems in suburban neighborhoods, too.  Verizon employees openly admit they are fighting a losing battle with management to replace defective cables and equipment that should have been replaced years ago.  Management keeps winning and customers keep losing.

“When we come to this area, we dread it,” admits Alex Long, a cable splicer at Verizon for 22 years.

Long just pulled up to a pole off Burksdale Road in Norfolk and found nothing he had not seen many times before  — untrimmed tree branches overgrown into the overhead wires.  The branches had managed to rub the phone cable’s insulation down to bare copper wire.

As a result, whenever it rains, telephone service in the neighborhood becomes sporadic.  If tree branches don’t knock service out, cable-chewing squirrels do.  The lines, the equipment, and the technology is well past its prime, but Verizon management insists repair crews fix what is already there instead of replacing it with something better.  It’s all a matter of money, and Verizon wants to spend as little as possible on its copper landline network.

Long’s experiences were the highlight of a piece published by the Virginian-Pilot, which has heard complaints from readers about dreadful Verizon phone service across the region.

The repairman discloses Verizon technicians have known about the bad cable for at least five years, but requests to replace it have been repeatedly rejected.

“The cable’s totally shot,” Long told the newspaper. “It needs to be replaced, and the company’s budget doesn’t allow for it. That’s what engineering keeps telling us.”

In Hampton Roads, Va., it is a case of the fiber haves and have nots.  The parts of Hampton Roads that have been upgraded to Verizon’s fiber to the home network are virtually trouble-free in comparison to neighborhoods where copper cables still deliver service.  Verizon’s legacy network is of such concern, the Virginia State Corporation Commission has increasingly taken a close look at the level of service Verizon is providing in non-FiOS areas.

William Irby, director of the commission’s Division of Communications, has heard plenty of concerns that Verizon is neglecting their copper network in favor of FiOS fiber.

Verizon’s copper wire neglect might not be such a big problem had the company provided a date certain for upgrade relief.  But with FiOS expansion also stalled, some cities are now wondering if Verizon is abandoning them.

Boston is one of them.

Left Behind: The Cities Without FiOS

Verizon FiOS is well-known in eastern Massachusetts.  There are those who have it and those who want it.  Verizon had been aggressively pursuing franchise agreements with 111 communities across the state until the company announced it was putting on the brakes and ceasing further expansion efforts in new areas.  That leaves Boston and other communities like Quincy behind because they didn’t sign agreements with the company fast enough.

“If you’ve got FiOS, lucky you,” shares Quincy resident Roger Jones. “If you don’t, good luck.”

Jones says Verizon has left Quincy with a neglected landline network the company doesn’t seem interested in maintaining, much less replacing with fiber optics.

“The company believed in fiber optics because they saw the opportunities fiber could deliver, like additional revenue from selling TV channels,” Jones says. “But then Wall Street caught up to them and said it was all too much.  I might even understand that, except they won’t spend a nickle maintaining what they already have either, unless the regulators twist their arms and threaten fines over the bad service.”

Jones says his Verizon phone line was out three times earlier this year.

“Three strikes and they were out — I switched to Comcast,” Jones says. “A Verizon repair guy that came to my house the third time said all of his relatives switched to Comcast because service got to be so unreliable with Verizon’s old network.”

Back on Burksdale Road in Norfolk, Long was trying to track down another customer’s phone troubles — a loud hum on their line.  Hours later, Long decided it was a futile effort and began looking for an unused replacement pair of good wires he could switch to for the customer.  With the growing number of Verizon customers disconnecting their landline service permanently, that task gets easier every day.

Long told the newspaper it was no surprise Burksdale Road customers were experiencing problems.  Closures which were designed to protect the cable where it splits off individual phone lines were supposed to be water and air-tight.  Instead, he was working with a deteriorating rubber enclosure that showed its age after years of service.  Unfortunately, he explains, Burksdale Road customers will simply have to make due.

Not only won’t Long be able to replace the deteriorating infrastructure he finds, he’ll be forced to improvise with Verizon’s latest cost-cutting solution for wet cables — covering them with sheeting that resembles a plastic garbage bag.  Even that is nothing new for Burksdale Road.  Several houses down, a cable “rain-slicker” was already tightly wrapped around a section of cable where the rubber closure had gone missing altogether.

After getting the dial tone back, Long handed the customer his business card with his direct number and apologized.

“You may have problems again,” he said, advising the customer to call him directly the next time his phone line stops working.

Verizon better hope the customer doesn’t call the local cable company to switch providers or disconnect his landline altogether.

The California Public Utilities Commission’s Consumer Protection and Safety Division is recommending $99 million in fines against the local power utility and several phone companies for overloading power poles with cables which toppled and started a major wildfire in Malibu Canyon in 2007.

Even worse, the PUC alleges, the power company lied to investigators and destroyed evidence to cover up the cause of the blaze, which burned more than a dozen structures to the ground and destroyed dozens of vehicles.

Named in addition to Southern California Edison are phone companies: Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, and NextC Networks of California. All are being blamed for loading up phone poles with excessive wiring for both traditional utility service and backhaul wired connections to serve area cell towers. The bulk of the proposed fine is likely to be lodged against Edison because of the evidence tampering allegations, but phone companies are also deemed liable.

At issue are the annual bouts of Santa Ana winds which can create gusts up to 80mph or higher. Most utility poles were designed to support a load of a few power cables, landline phone service, and cable television lines. But in many parts of canyon country, wireless phone companies rely heavily on utility poles to connect to their network of cell towers which are strategically located on ridges and mountains to serve populated valley regions below. While some cell phone companies now rely on fiber connections, many also still utilize a series of copper wire circuits to provide sufficient wireless capacity. In some cases, companies may hang several cables to meet bandwidth needs. The more cables, the more susceptible poles become to wind loads, which can literally snap poles in half or force them out of the ground in high wind gusts.

When electric lines topple, they can start fires that quickly grow out of control in remote areas.

Downed power lines are blamed for a number of wildfires in California, including the 2008 Sesnon fire in the San Fernando Valley. Fire investigators and local officials have pressured utility companies to mitigate the hazards from downed power lines by keeping excess cables and equipment off the poles.

Hans Laetz, a Malibu resident who has lived with what he calls “spindly-looking utility poles” for more than a decade was not surprised when life-threatening wildfires were blamed on downed lines.

“My family and my neighbors in Malibu are being placed at risk,” Laetz told the Los Angeles Times. “I drove under those poles on Malibu Canyon Road for 10 years, and I thought one of these days, one of those poles was going to fall. You could tell this was a disaster waiting to happen…. And then it happened.”

Edison denied the allegations it mislead investigators and called the proposed fine “excessive.”

FairPoint Communications, which took control of Verizon landlines in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont in 2009 and then promptly went bankrupt is now appealing to New Hampshire’s regulators and legislature for deregulation.

Teresa Rosenberger, the company’s New Hampshire president, told the Nashua Telegraph that before FairPoint Communications took over Verizon’s northern New England landlines in 2009, that means of communication was the “only game in town.” Now that Verizon’s “monopoly” no longer exists, FairPoint wants the “shackles [removed from] our ankles.”

Setting aside the fact Verizon and FairPoint both faced identical competitors — Comcast and AT&T in parts of the state, the primary difference between the incumbent landline phone company and its cable competition is that the latter enjoys the right to choose its customers.  Landline providers must deliver universal access to basic service, something both FairPoint and Verizon managed for more than a century.

Rosenberger claims that with the rapid decline of landlines, FairPoint should be free from regulatory constraints it argues limits its ability to compete on pricing and service.  Rosenberger uses FairPoint’s biggest failure — its rapid loss of customers — as the core argument for allowing deregulation, which would deliver few checks and balances from state regulators.

FairPoint’s market share in New Hampshire is now down to 49% and dropping.  Its competition — Comcast and wireless mobile providers, now account for the majority of phone lines in the state.  FairPoint’s line losses spiked when the company took over providing service in northern New England from Verizon Communications.  Many FairPoint customers would describe that level of service as poor, with billing and service complaints reaching epic proportions before the company ultimately declared bankruptcy.

Rosenberger points out that the traditional way utility services deal with changing business models is to sell off non-performing or excess assets.  Electric utilities sell excess power, but phone companies like FairPoint have few things other providers want.

In particular, FairPoint is upset it is saddled with a statewide network of telephone poles that “nobody wants.”

“We lose a ton of money on these poles” when work has to be done on them, Rosenberger told the newspaper. “There is the flag rate, the excavation fee, paying for a cop out there – and that’s before taxation and reporting requirements.”

FairPoint notes their competitors gets to use those poles, and are not necessarily contributing their fair share towards their upkeep.

FairPoint isn’t asking to abandon its universal service obligation, something AT&T has lobbied for throughout its territories.  But it does want to do away with pricing regulations and reporting requirements.  If FairPoint offers a business customer a special discount rate, it must file that rate publicly with state regulators, which is public information.  FairPoint says its competitors may be using that information to undercut them in contract negotiations.  But the public price regulations are in place to prevent a phone company from offering dirt cheap service for a select few, effectively subsidized by other ratepayers.

FairPoint also wants quality of service reporting regulations eased, and that comes as a concern to some New Englanders who lived through FairPoint’s messy transition from Verizon service.  Even today, there are ongoing disputes over whether FairPoint is meeting state obligations on everything from how quickly they answer customer calls to whether or not service problems are resolved on a timely basis.

By the time Hurricane Irene reached upstate New York and New England, it was a tropical storm some say was over-hyped from the outset, but don’t tell that to utility companies facing weeks of service restorations that will leave some of their customers offline until October.

The worst damage to infrastructure was done in this region, with utility poles swept away in flood waters right along with the homes they used to serve.  Telephone and cable companies in several parts of the region cannot even begin to restore service until higher-priority electric service is brought back.  Besides, you can’t use a broadband connection if your power has been out for a week plus.

Those addicted to their online connection are making due in parking lots and other Wi-Fi hotspots where service prevailed over Irene.  Wireless connectivity from cell phone companies is also getting a workout, assuming customers are aware of usage caps and limitations which could make September’s bill much higher than expected.

Stop the Cap! has learned some DSL service restoration appointments in upstate New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire are now extending into October, although companies suggest outside work may resolve problems.  Customers with the worst luck face a lengthy wait for the replacement of utility poles, new utility lines to be strung across them, and replacement of individual lines connected from the pole to individual homes.

Some FairPoint Communications customers are finding Irene did a real number on their DSL service even if power outages were limited.

In southwestern New Hampshire, Robert Mitchell was presented with a unique error page on his computer after the lights came back on:

“…we are improving the security of your broadband connection. As such, you have been redirected to the FairPoint Communications broadband service page to install a security update.”

That was a fine idea, except its implementation left customers like Mitchell with the most secure broadband connection around, resistant to all malware and viruses — namely, by not having any connection at all.

My annoyance only increased when I realized that FairPoint may have provided a link to download the security update software, but they were not going to make the process of accessing that software easy.

“Your Web browser (Firefox) and Operating System (Mac) are not compatible with the DSL Security improvement process…please re-open this page on a Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 PC using Internet Explorer,” the message continued.

Bully for me, I have two Macs in the office. Time to call technical support? Nope, sorry. Both of my phone lines use Vonage, a VoIP service that relies on a working DSL modem for dial tone. Cell service at the house was sketchy at best — if I could even get through to technical support during a hurricane.

With the help of an old Windows XP machine, Mitchell managed to finally get back online.  Later, he learned the power spikes and brownouts that preceded the blackout in his neighborhood had caused his DSL modem to resort to its original default settings.  When FairPoint customers first connect a DSL modem, the company prompts them to perform the aforementioned “security update.”  Only FairPoint stopped offering that update more than eight months earlier.  Now, according to Mitchell, it’s just the default start page for newly activated DSL modems.

Customers further east in downstate New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey are finding getting service restoration highly dependent on which provider they use.

Time Warner Cable customers numbering about 350,000 found their service out Wednesday after leftover flooding and debris tore up fiber cables serving Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.  Service was restored that evening.

Cablevision customers in Connecticut are still experiencing new outages caused by flooding, and with power company workers contending with more damage in that state than further south in New York, cable crews can’t restore service until the lights are back on.

Cablevision customers on Long Island are still being told not to bother calling the cable company to report outages.  Those that do are often given a date of Sept. 15 for full service restoration, although it could be sooner if damage in individual neighborhoods is less severe.  A Cablevision spokesman said, “Cablevision is experiencing widespread service interruptions, primarily related to the loss of power.  Cablevision crews are in the field and we will be working around the clock to make necessary repairs, in close coordination with local utilities.  Generally, as electricity is returned to an area, customers will be able to access Cablevision service.”

Verizon customers in downstate New York and New Jersey faced lengthy hold times to report service outages, and are given a range of dates from later this week until mid-September for full service restoration.  Some pockets of very badly damaged infrastructure may take even longer to access and repair.  Verizon’s largest union workforce, under the auspices of Communications Workers of America District 1 are accusing Verizon management of slowing repairs with denials of overtime work requests, in part to punish workers for their recent strike action.  John Bonomo, a Verizon spokesperson, denies that accusation, but added the company is not treating the thousands of customers still without service as an emergency, noting landline service “is not as vital as it had been in past years.”

Comcast customers, mostly in Pennsylvania, Vermont and Massachusetts, are turning to smartphones to cope through extended service outages, according to the Boston Globe:

Comcast Corp. customer Soraya Stevens turned to her iPhone when her cable blew out, logging on to Twitter from her Bedford home for the latest power outage updates. “I would not have any communication or insight without my smartphone,’’ said Stevens, a software engineer.

Some customers who lost cable service lost their TV, Internet, and landline phone, which are often bundled and sold together. Many turned to their smartphones, operating on batteries and the signal from cellphone towers, or friends and family who still had cable service.

AT&T, which serves landline customers in Connecticut, experienced more outages a day or two after Irene departed as battery backup equipment installed at landline central offices finally failed.  Those equipped with diesel generators are still up and running, but many AT&T customers sold a package of broadband and phone service may actually be receiving telephone service over a less-robust Voice Over IP network, supported with battery backup equipment that shuts down after 24 hours, when the batteries are exhausted.  This has left customers with standard copper wire phone service still up and running, but customers on Voice Over IP completely disconnected.

Bill Henderson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1298, told the Hartford Courant those landlines aren’t considered landlines by the Department of Utility Control, and aren’t regulated for reliability, as the old system is.

“Technology has risen. Some of the things we’ve given up in that system is reliability,” he said. “This is what I’ve been screaming about to the DPUC. It’s a telephone! We need to regulate this service.”

Customers are also complaining loudly about AT&T’s poor wireless performance during Irene, with many tower outages and service disruptions that are still ongoing.

Remember, when services are restored, be sure and contact your provider and request a full service credit.  You will not receive one unless you ask.

AT&T’s record of delivering reliable landline service has remained an open question for Bakersfield, Calif. residents for more than six months, as repeated outages leave several AT&T landline customers without access to a dial tone.  Even worse, some of the customers impacted have been left without any phone service for weeks on end, including one woman whose life literally depends on a working phone.

Andrea Williams, who lives alone in her Bakersfield home, suffered a stroke and has a heart condition — making access to a phone absolutely essential to her well-being.  Williams is also legally blind, making a cell phone an insurmountable challenge.  Instead, Williams says she has memorized the location of the buttons on her long-standing cordless landline phone, a phone that was out of service just after Christmas and largely stayed that way for three weeks.

Despite having made numerous calls to AT&T trying to get the problem corrected, Williams says no one from AT&T ever showed up.  It took an investigative report from Bakersfield’s KGET-TV newsroom to finally get AT&T to respond.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KGET Bakersfield ATT Phone Lines Crossed 12-29-10 and 1-10-11.flv[/flv]

Back in December, AT&T in Bakersfield left hundreds of customers without service or cross-connected with other customers’ phone lines.  It all culminated three weeks later in one health-challenged resident breaking out in tears when local TV station KGET finally helped get her service restored.  (5 minutes)

Fast forward to late June, and AT&T’s reliability is again up for a challenge, as some residents in the unincorporated community of Glennville, 30 miles north of Bakersfield, are fed up with repeated outages, even after eight families collectively paid $16,000 to AT&T to extend wired phone service and broadband to their neighborhood.

Around the same time Williams was experiencing problems with her phone line in December, residents in Glennville began experiencing repeated outages of their own.

“I think from December to January, it was 15 times it went out,” said resident Ray Schill.  “From February to now, [the lines have been out] another 10-15 times.”

Residents in Glennville are especially concerned because they cannot count on their landlines, and cell service is spotty to non-existent in the area.

“My major concern is we’re going to have a big problem up here — someone is going to be ill, we’re going to have a fire, someone’s going to die — who is liable,” Kathryn Ervin, a Glennville resident told KGET News.

What happens when residents call AT&T for help?

We get the runaround, says Schill, with promises extending through the months of May, June, and now July 15.

Schill doesn’t hold much confidence in AT&T’s promises, especially after the company responded to an inquiry from the state’s Public Utilities Commission which culminated in his complaint being closed-as-resolved.

Once again, KGET-TV was on the case for the benefit of its viewers, and reporter Kelsey Thomas received a remarkable response from AT&T — the company “couldn’t handle the number of people using the phones in Glennville.” (population: 280)

The company promises to “upgrade its software” to resolve the problem, but could not give Thomas a time frame for when that would be complete.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KGET Bakersfield Folks in Glennville fed up with ATT 6-27-11.mp4[/flv]

KGET-TV gets involved with AT&T once again, this time to help hundreds of residents of Glennville, Calif., who are also experiencing trouble with the company’s landline service.  (3 minutes)