Two months after a late July thunderstorm interrupted phone and internet service for some CenturyLink customers in parts of Albemarle County, Va, some are still waiting for the phone company to restore service.

Multiple CenturyLink customers around the area told The Daily Progress about the extended outage, and the company’s lack of responsiveness in restoring service. Many report their service appointments are unilaterally canceled or a repair technician just never shows up. Others are receiving messages the repairs are complete, but they still have no service.

Mobile phone service is spotty in this part of central Virginia, so many customers keep their landlines to reach emergency services. With service out for nearly two months, making emergency calls or accessing the internet has been difficult.

In August, CenturyLink employee Derek Kelly told attendees at a Albemarle Broadband Authority meeting that at storm brought down almost a mile of CenturyLink’s legacy copper wire network, which has been in place for decades. Kelly noted CenturyLink intended to replace the damaged copper wiring with more copper wiring, instead of upgrading to fiber optics, and because of supply chain issues, customers have been left waiting.

“We ran into logistical issues of being able to find that length of copper,” Kelly said. “I think between COVID and everything else, supplies are limited, so it took us longer than we typically hope for to get the copper in place and get it in town and get it hung back up and spliced in.”

So far, customers are still being billed for service they do not have, and the company has refused to issue automatic credits for customers left without service. Some customers want CenturyLink to compensate them extra for interrupted service as well as for the company wasting their time on unfulfilled service calls and being left on hold, sometimes for an hour, trying to resolve the problem.

Firefly is a service of municipal/co-op power companies in central Virginia.

Albemarle County Supervisor Donna Price has been hearing complaints from local residents for weeks and she is also well aware CenturyLink is in the process of selling a large part of its legacy local phone operations in 20 states to Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm. The phone company will keep its most profitable customers in 16 states — many already served by fiber optics, under its Lumen brand. As that sale waits to close, Price believes CenturyLink has already walked away from their soon-to-be ex-customers.

“I believe that corporate CenturyLink has basically given up and has abandoned their responsibility, which leaves it all upon the individual consumers to either seek some sort of collective relief or basically just suffer until a new provider comes in,” Price told the newspaper. “I think CenturyLink has failed in customer service, in the delivery of service and, I’ll be a little more generous, in the recovery from the storm, because those are really difficult situations.”

Some customers in nearby Fluvanna County who have also experienced multi-month service interruptions from CenturyLink were lucky enough to have a choice of broadband providers, and many have switched to Firefly Fiber Broadband, which also supplies landline phone service. Firefly is owned and operated by a partnership subsidiary that includes the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative. That fiber to the home network has survived serious storms in the past without lengthy service interruptions. The member-owned cooperative has also invested heavily in fiber broadband and communications services its members demand, and if something goes wrong, local repairmen answerable to local supervisors are on hand to manage any issues.

Firefly Fiber is currently looking to expand its operations within its central Virginia service area, which includes the counties of Albemarle, Appomattox, Buckingham, Cumberland, Fluvanna, Goochland, Greene, Louisa, and Powhatan.

Frontier is the dominant phone company in West Virginia.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission has ordered Frontier Communications to make significant improvements in its aging copper wire telephone network after a comprehensive investigation found the company’s landline phone service and broadband to be lacking.

The order comes two years after the state began investigating the phone company and six months after a service audit was completed. In the last year, 1,342 complaints about poor service were filed with the state’s Public Service Commission.

“Frontier customers in this state remain plagued with service problems even as the customer base – and the corresponding revenue – declines. The Focused Management Audit was designed to find the underlying service quality problems, and possible solutions, in the hopes of placing Frontier on a better path,” the report concluded.

Over the past two years, Frontier gradually implemented some of the recommendations made by the state, particularly a more robust tree-trimming program to pre-emptively reduce tree-related outages and an automated system that can detect service issues and outages before customers call to complain. But Frontier’s larger problem is its lack of investment in network upgrades, particularly related to replacing old copper wire infrastructure with fiber optics. The study identified the 25 worst exchanges in the state most plagued by service outages and complaints and demanded that Frontier rehabilitate or upgrade those areas to improve service. But the company has refused the Commission’s request to deploy fiber optic connections to every cross-box in the state, which connects Frontier’s network to neighborhood phone lines. Such an upgrade would dramatically reduce Frontier’s reliance on copper wiring and improve phone and internet service.

Frontier rejected the idea as “unfeasible,” claiming it would cost $100 million to complete fiber connections to each of Frontier’s 3,255 existing cross box locations. If the company moved to digital phone service across those fiber lines, the cost would rise to $200 million, according to Frontier, adding it would have no choice but to pass these costs onto customers in the state.

“Given the exorbitant expense associated with such a comprehensive endeavor, the cost of voice service would consequently increase to unsustainable levels,” the company claimed.

Yet earlier this spring, at the height of the pandemic and after declaring bankruptcy, Frontier paid out $38 million in retention bonuses to its top executives, urging the same people who presided over the company as it went bankrupt to remain on the payroll at least until the bankruptcy was discharged.

The state was given an early warning about Frontier’s decreasing performance in July 2019 after an auditing firm found the company financially troubled and had cut back dramatically on ongoing maintenance spending. The auditor also reported Frontier was likely losing customers fast and would soon feel the financial pressure of lost revenue. Just as bad, the auditor reported Frontier’s ability to stay ahead of its service problems could be compromised further by the likely retirement of more than half of the company’s most experienced service technicians in the next five years.

The auditor correctly predicted Frontier’s financial health. The company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April and is reorganizing. The company claims it will exit bankruptcy in much better financial shape, with much of its debt discharged or renegotiated by creditors. In turn, Frontier has promised to boost investment in network fiber upgrades, but has not been specific about what areas it will target. A hearing to discuss some of these matters is scheduled for Oct. 28.

Even with Frontier’s imminent exit from bankruptcy, West Virginia officials remain concerned about the phone company’s commitments and whether the new management will continue to honor earlier agreements with state officials.

A tropical storm that swept up the east coast of the United States took out Frontier Communications’ landline network, its backups, and 911 service for residents of Orange and Sullivan Counties, N.Y. for 13 hours last night, requiring a response from local fire officials after Frontier’s backup equipment also failed.

Tropical Storm Isaias brought significant, but not unprecedented wind and rain to the Hudson Valley of New York on Tuesday. While most of the damage and service outages were further east in the New York City, Long Island, and New Jersey areas, a general power failure in the City of Middletown started a chain of events that left two counties without Frontier phone, internet, or 911 service from 7:30 pm Tuesday night until 8:30 am Wednesday morning.

When the power failure began, Frontier’s switching network went down. Calls to 911 failed to connect, and customers reported no dial tone or internet access. Frontier’s backup battery system, designed to operate in the event of a power failure, itself failed and literally melted under the pressure, spilling enough toxic chemicals to force Frontier to request assistance from the Middletown Fire Department and Orange County Hazmat, which responded to contain the toxic material. Frontier had to drive in a replacement backup solution from another service area to get its network up and running again.

“There were several equipment failures there related to the power outage,” Brendan Casey, commissioner of emergency services told the Times Herald-Record. “Their backup system failed, their switch failed, battery issues that resulted in a minor hazmat issue. It was like everything just failed up there.”

After dealing with the failed battery equipment, county officials, firefighters, and Frontier technicians were left in the building’s parking lot cooling their heels until 2 am trying to figure out how to restore 911 service to the area, without success. Casey reported Frontier successfully restored 911 service later Wednesday morning.

Orange County, N.Y.

As Frontier technicians gradually restore service to individual customers affected by the storm, county officials are calling on the New York Public Service Commission to conduct a review of the incident and investigate if Frontier was adequately prepared to deal with the storm. Frontier will not be alone. Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted utility companies across downstate New York, accusing them of being ill-prepared to handle the storm. Some customers are expected to be without power, phone, and internet service for up to a week.

“We know that severe weather is our new reality and the reckless disregard by utility companies to adequately plan for tropical storm Isaias left tens of thousands of customers in the dark, literally and figuratively. Their performance was unacceptable,” Cuomo said. Cuomo ordered the PSC to “launch an investigation into Verizon, PSEG Long Island, Con Edison, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, Orange and Rockland Utilities, and New York State Electric & Gas to understand how such a failure could have taken place. New Yorkers deserve answers and they deserve better. The large volume of outages and the utilities’ failure to communicate with customers in real-time proves they did not live up to their legal obligations. The fact that many customers still do not know when their power will be restored makes it even more unacceptable. The worst of this situation was avoidable, and it cannot happen again.”

Frontier was not the only telecommunications company embarrassed by the tropical storm. Along the Westchester-Putnam border, power outages knocked out cell service. At one location, a backup generator designed to provide backup power to the cell tower immediately caught fire, causing damage to the building at the base of the tower.

“While there was a fire at the cell tower in question, I have no information if all carriers on that tower are down or just one. What we do know is that cell services across the county are negatively impacted for all carriers. We had reports that cell towers in this region (Putnam, Orange, Rockland, Passaic) were damaged during the storms,” said Thomas Lannon, director of Putnam County’s technology office.

Frontier filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2020.

(Reuters) – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will probe an extensive T-Mobile network outage that impacted customers across the United States, the head of the U.S. telecommunications regulatory agency said on Monday.

“The T-Mobile network outage is unacceptable. The @FCC is launching an investigation. We’re demanding answers – and so are American consumers,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said on Twitter.

Neville Ray, president of technology at T-Mobile, said on Twitter Monday that engineers were working to resolve a voice and data issue that has affected customers around the country.

He said later that data services were now available and some calls were completing. “Alternate services like WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, Facetime etc. are available,” he added.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert addressed the outage on a network status page on the company’s website late last evening:

Starting just after 12 pm ET and continuing throughout the day, T-Mobile has been experiencing a voice and text issue that has intermittently impacted customers in markets across the U.S. We are recovering from this now but it may still take several more hours before customer calling and texting is fully recovered. Neville Ray has shared updates throughout the day but I wanted to share the latest on what we know and what we’re doing to address it. This is an IP traffic related issue that has created significant capacity issues in the network core throughout the day. Data services have been working throughout the day and customers have been using services like FaceTime, iMessage, Google Meet, Google Duo, Zoom, Skype and others to connect.

I can assure you that we have hundreds of our engineers and vendor partner staff working to resolve this issue and our team will be working through the night as needed to get the network fully operational. 

Pai

Early this morning, Sievert provided this update: “These issues are now resolved. We again apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”

T-Mobile had 86 million customers at the end of 2019. T-Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the outage.

In 2018, Pai backed the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint Corp saying it would lead to improved 5G coverage in the United States and would bring much faster mobile broadband to rural Americans.

T-Mobile on April 1 officially completed its $23 billion merger with Sprint, solidifying its position as the No.3 wireless providers in the United States.

Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Stephen Coates

At least “dozens of people” in Wisconsin found they could not reach 911 because of Frontier’s repeated network failures. WSAW in Wausau reports in a special investigation that Frontier’s ongoing problems may be putting the elderly at risk. (6:02)

In this follow-up story, WSAW reports that local officials in Marathon County, Wis. need a long-term solution to Frontier’s growing service problems that often leave local customers without service “for weeks.” (1:25)