Last week, Verizon’s Tom Maguire responded to some of our earlier coverage about Verizon’s decision to abandon landline service on portions of Fire Island devastated by last fall’s Hurricane Sandy. We have received several complaints from readers about our decision to grant space to Verizon to present their views without reciprocation. While we understand those concerns, Stop the Cap! believes readers deserve both sides of a discussion that AT&T and Verizon will soon seek to have with customers across many of their rural service areas. For that reason, we invited Verizon’s participation. This is our response:

Phillip Dampier

Raise your hand if you want Verizon’s Voice Link to replace your traditional telephone service and lose your only wired broadband connection.

Almost no one has. Despite the arguments from Verizon Communications and AT&T that wireless is the answer to troublesome copper wiring and maintaining rural telephone service, dozens of Fire Island, N.Y. customers have been sufficiently provoked to file comments with state regulators, making it clear they want no part of the loss of their landline and its accompanying, affordable broadband service. In more than 135 public comments with the Public Service Commission at press time, Stop the Cap! could only find one comment from a Fire Island resident who had no issues with Verizon’s wireless landline replacement. He was upset Verizon had not wired a nearby yacht club for broadband service.

Both AT&T and Verizon have publicly advocated that rural customers would be better served moving from traditional wired landline service to their respective wireless 4G LTE networks. AT&T characterizes it as “an upgrade” that switches customers to an “all IP” 21st century network. Verizon has been less bold in its public policy statements, framing its position mostly in economic terms  — does it make sense to invest large sums to upgrade or repair damaged infrastructure that serves a relatively small number of customers?

Until recently, customers have been free to make the choice between a landline and wireless service themselves. Now, the residents of Fire Island and some barrier islands off the coast of New Jersey have a very different choice: They can accept Verizon’s Voice Link landline replacement, sign up for cell service that has proved troublesome in both areas, or give up phone service altogether. Verizon has made it clear it is not prepared to replace the destroyed infrastructure on portions of the islands, it will not invest in major upkeep and repairs to network facilities that may have been compromised but are still functioning for now, and will likely never offer its fiber FiOS network in the affected areas.

Stop the Cap! has expressed repeated concern that the decision to abandon wired infrastructure in favor of wireless is based primarily on profit motives, is short-sighted, and represents a downgrade in the quality of an important, regulated utility service, particularly in rural and out-of-the-way places that have few, if any alternatives. Fire Island is shaping up to argue our case, based on the testimony of those actually living and working on the island.

Customers Don’t Want the ‘Solution’ Verizon is Offering

Voice Link is not proving a welcome permanent resident on Fire Island for many customers.

The reasons are clear: inadequate wireless service is common on the island, Voice Link does not perform or sound as good as the landline it replaces, and Verizon’s wireless broadband alternative will cost many residents their unlimited-use DSL service in favor of a wireless capped option that could cost more than $100 a month.

Letter to affected Verizon customers on Fire Island.

Verizon’s strongest argument is that landline service has fallen out of favor in the United States, with customers increasingly disconnecting home phones in favor of cell phones. If Verizon’s statistics are correct, 80 percent of the voice traffic on the island is already handled by Verizon Wireless. (Verizon does not specify if that traffic comes from permanent residents or temporary visitors, a point of contention with residents.)

Maguire was very careful to limit Verizon’s advocacy of Voice Link in terms of its capacity to handle voice calls. That is because Voice Link is currently incompatible with a whole range of important services that have worked fine with traditional landlines for years.

Maguire’s words are important: “Verizon’s commitment is to provide our customers with voice service,” — the kind you had in the late 70s. Voice Link fails faxing, home medical monitoring, home alarm systems, dial-up service, credit card transactions, and home satellite equipment that connects to the telephone network.

Voice Link is no upgrade for Fire Island. It represents turning back the clock, especially for broadband customers.

Maguire claimed in his editorial the company was only considering Voice Link for the universe of customers where the copper network was not supporting their requirements, with the exception of Sandy-impacted Fire Island and some New Jersey barrier islands. But that does not tell the whole story. In a filing with the New York State Public Service Commission, Verizon makes it clear it intends to introduce the same solution in other parts of New York:

It also seeks to deploy Voice Link in other parts of the State, both as an optional service in areas where the company also offers tariffed wireline local exchange service, and (subject to the Commission’s approval) as a sole service offering in particular locations and circumstances.

While Verizon has sought to appease regulators by volunteering to offer an equal level of service for the same or less money, there are questions about whether a regulator has any oversight authority over Voice Link.

“It is a remarkable concept in utility regulation that a regulated utility may determine that costs are unreasonable and as a result choose to provide alternative, and potentially unregulated service to affected customers,” said Louis Barash of Ocean Beach. “Verizon proposes to permit the PSC to regulate that activity, but it is not clear that the Commission has such authority. And it certainly isn’t clear that the Commission would have any authority to reverse its decision, or otherwise to sanction the company, if Verizon failed to comply with its undertakings.”

Broadband & Competition Matters: Forcing Customers Off Unlimited DSL in Favor of Near-Exclusive, Usage-Capped, Verizon Wireless Broadband

Offering broadband is a vital part of any telephone company’s strategy to add and keep customers. Yet Verizon’s DSL customers on the western half of Fire Island will have their broadband service canceled unless wired service (copper or fiber) is available. Verizon’s only alternative is a usage-capped, prohibitively expensive Verizon Wireless mobile data plan that may or may not perform well on the signal-challenged island. There is literally nowhere else for customers to go.

Verizon’s own statistics confirm none of its wireless competitors handle significant traffic on and off the island.

Maguire: “A multimillion dollar investment with no guarantee that residents of the island will even subscribe to our services makes no economic sense. In fact, that’s probably why Verizon is the sole provider on the island. None of the companies we compete with in other parts of New York offer services on the island.”

Maguire’s evidence:

“The company discovered that 80 percent of the voice traffic was already wireless.  If other wireless providers were factored in, it is likely that the percentage is closer to 90 percent.”

That means Verizon’s wireless competitors collectively have a traffic share of less than 10%.

Verizon’s Plan & Public Safety

Residents advise visitors they better have Verizon Wireless and a robust phone that works well in challenging reception areas if they expect to use it while on the island. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile customers are often out of luck. That poses an immediate and direct threat to public safety, according to public safety officials.

“The cellphone service on Fire Island progressively gets worse every year as more and more people are bringing smartphones out there,” explained Dominic Bertucci, chief of the Kismet Fire Department. “There are some days where you can barely get a signal.”

The Brookhaven Town Fire Chiefs Council, which represents the leadership of 39 fire departments and fire companies in the region is vehemently opposed to Voice Link and considers it a safety menace, especially during frequent summer power outages when the island’s population is at its peak.

“Without a copper wire phone service, a service that still functions even during a power failure, how can we insure that the residents can call for help?” asks president John Cronin. “How will they call for the lifesaving services that are provided by the fire and EMS units of Fire Island? The corporate desire for greater profit cannot be made at the expense of the safety of the residents of Fire Island.”

“Wireless service is not reliable,” adds Fair Harbor resident Meredith Davis. “Imagine being in an emergency and having ‘spotty’ reception which happens out there all the time on cell phones. That is not safe and not okay.”

Verizon disclaims legal responsibility for failed wireless 911 calls in its terms and conditions. The most Verizon owes you is a refund of a portion of your monthly service charges.

“If you are unfamiliar with Fire Island, there is very little medical service and the only way off the island is a scheduled ferry service or, for some people who have permits and trucks, a very long drive,” explains lifelong Fire Island resident Nora Olsen. “When someone needs to be rushed to the hospital, they are evacuated by helicopter, which makes timely emergency calls of the essence to save lives. So you can imagine how important it is to have reliable phone service. It should be up to the individual to decide if they want to switch to a wireless service. They should not be forced into it by Verizon. The people who are most likely to want to stick with the phone service they have been used to all their life — senior citizens — are the most likely to need to use the phone to call for help.”

A number of residents also claim Verizon has overblown the real extent of damage on the island and is not operating in good faith.

“In the larger communities of Ocean Beach and Seaview, I have met no one yet that has their connectivity lost,” said resident Karen Warren. “So for Verizon to assert that the infrastructure is largely destroyed and to repair it would be an enormous expense is simply not true. To add insult to injury, before coming out and finding out that our lines were in fact intact, Verizon offered to ‘replace’ our existing DSL data service with LTE Jetpak wireless broadband. The performance and reliability with only a single device connected was horrendous.”

“[Verizon is] pushing us toward a higher-cost and lower-value solution,” Warren concluded.

Getting specific information about the current state of Verizon’s network on Fire Island and repair/replacement costs are hard to come by. Verizon filed an application with the PSC declaring much of the information confidential or a trade secret, refusing to share it with the public. The company was concerned some might access the Public Service Commission website, find the case number about Fire Island, navigate to the specific Verizon filing containing information about their infrastructure… and then vandalize it.

The worst affected communities on Fire Island.

Barash suspects Verizon might be hiding something, especially considering the company requested to bypass usual waiting periods and public notification requirements:

Verizon asserts that it would cost “$4.8 million for a voice-only digital loop carrier system comparable to the networking serving the eastern part of the island.” It is by no means clear, however, that such a system is the minimum required to restore/repair the western part of the system to the service it had pre-storm. Certainly Verizon’s application makes no representation to that effect. This estimate apparently contemplates an entire new system for the western portion of Fire Island, notwithstanding that a meaningful percentage of the copper wire system is still operational.

Moreover, Verizon’s position on the required scope of repairs has been a constantly shifting target. Verizon apparently advised Commission Staff, and Staff repeated at the April 18 Commission Hearing, that the western Fire Island telephone system was “damaged beyond repair by the storm.” Verizon apparently has abandoned that claim; this application indeed is premised on the assumption that the system can be repaired. Furthermore, in its first (May 3) submission to the Commission, Verizon stated that “five of the six cables that run between Fire Island and the mainland – the five that serve the western portion of the Island – were also badly damaged by the storm.” Just a week later, it has abandoned that claim as well, and instead in its amended Certification asserts “Five of the six cables that run throughout Fire Island were badly damaged by the storm.” It is hard to accept at face value Verizon’s estimated repair costs when even at this late date it does not seem to have a handle on exactly the damage that needs repair.

A full Hearing, with notice to affected customers, is necessary to develop facts sufficient to make such determinations and to be reasonably certain the Commission is acting based on reasonably verifiable facts.

Residents deserve a full voice and full disclosure in discussions that will directly impact their vital telecommunications services for years to come. Verizon’s corporate officials will not have to live with the results. Neither will the staff at the PSC.

Stop the Cap! has chosen to directly participate in the New York State Public Service Commission regulatory process and has filed two formal comments thus far. The first outlines Verizon’s greater strategy to abandon landline service in rural areas outlined by Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam in 2012. We also provided the Commission the prices Verizon Wireless intends to charge Verizon DSL customers switching to wireless broadband service. The second objects to Verizon’s excessive request for secrecy and exposes cell coverage issues on Fire Island.

Would you be surprised to learn a company with just a basic, outdated website replete with spelling and grammar errors holds at least 760 television station construction permits and licenses and just wrote a check for $46.5 million to buy 52 more stations from nine different owners, with plans to shut every last one of them down in the future?

That is precisely the business plan of “Landover Wireless Corp.” and its series of limited liability corporate entities, which are grabbing up as much UHF television spectrum they can apply for across the country.

They are not alone.

CTB Spectrum Services, a company associated with Landover 2 LLC, has 356 UHF TV construction permits/licenses. Its website offers slightly more information about its operations, but not much.

DTV America, a mysterious Sunrise, Fla.-based venture with an official mailing address of 12717 W. Sunrise Boulevard (Suite 372) has its headquarters inside a private mailbox at a UPS Store. The company also has countless requests for television licenses on the UHF dial. DTV America manager John Kyle is also listed as chairman and president of The Pharmacy Television Network, which appears to broadcast its programming on video displays inside pharmacies. DTV America has the lowest profile of all three companies, with no apparent website.

And you thought over the air television was dead.

DTV America’s home is inside a mailbox at the UPS Store in Sunrise, Fla.

A number of low power television owners are surprised to see the sudden rush to launch more than 1,000 new television stations across the country, particularly in rural markets that have been considered a financial dead-end for low power television. Being in the LPTV business and making a living at it often depends on whether a local cable company or satellite dish provider will pick up and relay the station to the majority of Americans that do all of their television viewing on a paid platform. Without this carriage, low power television outlets have several strikes against them: challenging reception from operating with relatively low power, the lack of compelling programming — many of these outlets air paid religious, home shopping, music, or infomercial programming 24 hours a day, and the lack of familiarity by viewers who may not realize these stations are on the air.

From information Stop the Cap! has obtained, none of these ventures actually intend to stay in the over-the-air television business. Instead, they are using FCC licensing rules to get valuable UHF spectrum without having to bid for it at forthcoming spectrum auctions. At least two of the companies claim they are raising capital to build a unicast 4G wireless content delivery network. But some critics contend they are actually spectrum squatters — speculators that have no intention of building anything. Instead, critics charge they will conduct minor experiments to effectively stall the FCC, hanging onto their permits and licenses until they can sell their holdings to a wireless provider hungry for 500-700MHz spectrum and willing to pay top dollar to get it.

Meanwhile, Landover’s $46.5 million buys them dozens of low power stations airing 30-minute commercials like “Skin Solutions by Dr. Graf.” The company claims it will keep those stations on the air until their wireless network is ready, and then the infomercials (along with the rest of the television programming) will be gone for good. Landover also managed to acquire larger Class A TV stations as part of the deal, including one each in Las Vegas and Sacramento, and three in Texas. These stations might become part of the company’s 4G network, sold off or compensated to sign-off forever as part of forthcoming “spectrum packing” by the FCC — further shrinking the UHF TV dial and auctioning off the “excess” spectrum to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and other cell companies.

CTB’s License Map

CTB also holds multiple TV licenses in several of its markets. The company claims it will combine those stations together in something akin to a high-powered cellular network to create a bigger wireless data pipe using “patent pending multi-frequency cellular terrestrial network technology [that] increases capacity by hundreds of times through frequency re-use, while also enabling full mobility, broadband Internet, and location-based services.”

CTB’s sales pitch claims its TV licenses offer up to 228MHz of bandwidth that is “essentially identical to 700MHz spectrum, but can be acquired at a fraction of the cost.” The company also claims it has exclusive rights to TV “White Space” spectrum via first adjacent channels, which are treated like guard bands to protect against interference from nearby stations.

All of these companies are applying for channels largely in low-interest rural markets, where they face few challenges from competing applicants. CTB calls this part of their rural “corridor” strategy. One such corridor covers stations in a line from Wisconsin west to Idaho.

All three companies are betting the FCC will allow them to eventually convert their over-the-air television licenses into wireless data networks, or let them sell the spectrum to deeper pocketed players in keeping with the Commission’s plan to open up more frequencies for data-hungry users. If the FCC allows it, these three entities will end up with the rights to prime wireless spectrum covering up to 90 percent of the country without having to spend a penny at forthcoming spectrum auctions.

But there are financial risks. The type of low power station licenses held by most of these companies do not get them a seat at the spectrum packing table. LPTV outlets are considered low-priority stations, and in larger communities, many could be forced off the air without compensation to make enough room for more important, full power stations.

No license, no 4G data network for Landover, CTB and others. But the chances of that happening in rural markets, where residents are lucky to have two or three over the air stations, are slim.

The technology might offer unique broadband opportunities for rural areas where conventional low-range cell towers are too expensive, if the technology works. A higher powered transmitter serving a rural, larger geographic area might prove financially attractive in low population density areas. Only time will tell if any of these entities will be able to raise the capital needed to fulfill the FCC’s construction permit obligations, which give owners just a few years to get their stations on the air or face forfeiture of their permit and/or license.

Phillip Dampier

It is no secret that there is an urban-rural broadband divide.

The market-driven, private enterprise broadband landscape delivers the best speeds and service to urban-suburban areas, particularly those in and around large cities, short-changing rural communities.

This is true regardless of the technology: the fastest fiber optic services are delivered in large population centers, and wireless speeds are fastest there as well. But as the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has discovered, the further away you get from these urban sectors, the poorer the service you are likely to get.

The NTIA’s findings present a significant challenge to phone company claims that rural customers would be better served with wireless broadband instead of spending money to support and upgrade landline infrastructure, which supports DSL and is upgradable to fiber optics.

The NTIA finds these rural wireless networks to be severely lacking:

Not only are far fewer rural residents than urban residents able to access 4G wireless services (i.e., at least 6Mbps downstream), but a further divide also exists within rural communities. For wireless download services greater than 6Mbps, Very Rural communities have approximately half the availability rate of Small Towns, and Small Towns have about half the availability rate of Exurbs (10, 18, and 36 percent, respectively).

This represents nothing new. AT&T and Verizon have shortchanged their rural customers with catastrophically slow DSL service (or none at all) for years:

For wireline download service, Very Rural communities also have the least availability of all five areas. Though a rural/urban split continues to be useful in providing generalized information about availability, a five-way classification uncovers a more refined picture of the divide in broadband availability across the nation. For example, at wireline download speeds of 50Mbps, broadband availability varies from 14 percent (Very Rural), 32 percent (Exurban), 35 percent (Small Town), 62 percent (Central City), to 67 percent (Suburban), even though the overall broadband availability was 63 percent in urban areas compared to 23 percent in rural areas. In addition, wireline and wireless broadband availability, particularly at faster speeds, tends to be higher within Central Cities and the Suburbs compared to everywhere else.

Why the disparity? It is a simple case of economics. Wealthy suburbs can afford the ultimate triple play packages, so providers prioritize the best service for these areas, even above less costly to serve urban centers. Rural residents either get no service at all or only basic slow speed DSL. The Return on Investment to improve broadband is inadequate for these companies in rural areas.

Source: NTIA

The same is true with wireless 4G service. Rural areas struggle for access or endure poor reception because fewer towers provide service away from major highways or town centers.

The NTIA observed wireless download speeds of 6Mbps or more were available to 90% of urban residents, but only 18% of small town residents. Wireless upload speeds of 3Mbps or greater were found in only 14% of small towns.

Dee Davis, president, Center for Rural Strategies, based in Whitesburg, Va. said the implications were clear.

“The market’s always going to go to the well-heeled communities,” Davis observed. “It’s going to go to the densest population.”

Folks in rural communities end up paying more for a lower level of service, Davis said.

“That also means that they don’t get the same chance to participate in the economy,” Davis added. “They don’t get to bring their goods and services to market in the same way. They don’t always get to participate.”

The economics of cutting off rural landlines delivers most of the benefits to providers, and assures decades of inferior service to consumers.

Economic market tests, including Return on Investment, that impact rural broadband availability will not disappear if AT&T and Verizon abandon their rural landline networks. While cost savings will be realized once rural wired infrastructure is decommissioned, there is no free market formula that would encourage either provider to pour investment funds into rural service areas. For the same reasons rural customers are broadband-challenged today, their comparatively smaller numbers and economic abilities will continue to fail investment metrics for innovative new services tomorrow.

The primary reason broadband speeds are lower in rural areas is inferior network infrastructure. Providers argue it does not make economic sense to invest in network upgrades to boost speeds for such a small number of customers. While wireless technology can be cheaper to deploy than the upkeep of a deteriorating landline network, it is not cheap or robust enough to deliver comparable broadband speeds now available in urban areas, especially as broadband usage continues to grow.

Verizon’s chief financial officer Fran Shammo admitted as much during remarks at the at JPMorgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in May:

If you recall, way back I guess about two years ago we did a trial with DirecTV in Erie, Pa., where we did broadband on the side of a house and offered a triple-play, if you will, which consisted of broadband, voice, and linear TV provided by DirecTV.

What we found was people were adoptive to the broadband; but because of the consumption of broadband through that LTE network, it was really detrimental to the spectrum and to the network performance. Because they used so much data, it soaked up so much of the spectrum.

So what we felt was LTE for broadband works in certain rural areas, but you can’t compete LTE broadband in those dense populated areas because you can’t — first of all, you can’t match the speed with a 50-megabit or a 100-megabit delivery between cable and FiOS and U-verse. And you literally don’t have enough spectrum to be able to use that much consumption.

So what we felt was by partnering with the cable companies, and delivering our LTE network with voice and data, and having that hardwired connection into the home was a better financial way to do it than trying to go LTE broadband. Because we just didn’t see where the spectrum could hold up to the volume that would be demanded.

Without rural cable companies to partner with, Verizon’s decision to move rural broadband to wireless guarantees rural Americans will not benefit from ongoing speed and capacity upgrades that are necessary to support the evolving Internet.

Powell

You and I may think America can do better providing fast and inexpensive broadband service. But a former chairman of the FCC now representing industry interests waved shiny keys of distraction to explain away why cable companies are still delivering Internet speeds slower than those found in Romania, Latvia, South Korea and Japan.

Michael Powell, the poster child of D.C.’s “revolving door” problem gave a well-compensated, rousing (yet fact-lacking) defense of an industry he was supposed to oversee in the public interest as the Bush Administration’s FCC chairman from 2001-2005.

“America is home to the world’s very best Internet companies,” said Michael Powell, chief executive of the National Cable and Telecommunications Assn. at the annual Cable Show in Washington, D.C. “We have worked hard to reach everyone, and now offer service to 93% of American homes. Despite our success, many people like to denigrate U.S. broadband by painting false comparisons to other countries. There are some nations doing very well, but it is foolish to compare countries like Latvia and France to the United States of America.”

Powell’s response is hardly a fact-filled defense for cable company broadband that still delivers slow speeds at high prices. Instead of attempting to call the statistics inaccurate, he tried to explain away the discrepancy by complaining people are ignoring the size of the country and its population.

In denial

Powell’s arguments might have some merit if the cable industry did not make a point of bypassing vast rural areas that do not meet Return on Investment tests. It is difficult to claim cable companies cannot deliver comparatively fast service in rural Iowa when they don’t offer any service at all.

The People’s Republic of China’s population is far larger than our own and is now a vital market for fiber optics manufacturers and suppliers. While some of America’s cable industry CEOs repeatedly argue America does not need fiber broadband or gigabit broadband speeds, the Chinese government has insisted that every new housing development be pre-wired with fiber that will easily and inexpensively supply those speeds in the near future.

Powell is correct to say speeds are improving in the United States, but there is growing evidence they are improving even faster overseas, especially in countries that are basing their primary telecommunication infrastructure on fiber optics, which can support enormously fast Internet speeds. As those fiber networks are lit, America will fall even faster in broadband rankings as long as cable operators continue to insist there is no demand or interest in the next generation of high-speed service. At the prices they charge, they may just prove their own “no demand”-argument, at least in this country.

Powell himself helped lay the foundation for America’s broadband duopoly by deregulating the industry with one hand while ignoring the need for competitive checks and balances with the other. At the end of Powell’s tenure, his greatest achievement was constructing an industry-friendly personal resumé to win lucrative employment as a telecommunications lobbyist.

Who better to speak with “authority” on telecommunications matters than a well-connected former FCC chairman that does the industry’s bidding? The NCTA hired him to deliver just the kind of defense cable operators hope Americans will believe.

Those that are aware of what broadband is like abroad don’t.

Verizon Voice Link: The company’s landline replacement, works over Verizon Wireless.

The New York Public Service Commission has granted limited approval for a Verizon Communications plan to replace traditional landline service on the western half of Fire Island with a wireless voice service some users complain is unstable and unreliable.

Verizon claims its landline network on Fire Island has been damaged irreparably in places, and argued it needed to immediately deploy a wireless alternative before the arrival of thousands of tourists on the island, a popular summer destination.

On May 3, Verizon asked the commission to approve the use of Voice Link, which provides fixed wireless phone service, anywhere in the state if the company can prove there is an equal competitor or if existing copper-based facilities are damaged or too costly to upgrade.

Stop the Cap! reminded local politicians, union representatives, and consumer advocates Verizon’s CEO earlier promised it would decommission its copper wire networks in rural areas in favor of wireless, mostly for financial reasons. The New York State Attorney General’s office took careful note of McAdam’s commitment to abandon copper in their objection letter to the commission.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam in 2012:

The vision that I have is we are going into the copper plant areas and every place we have FiOS, we are going to kill the copper. We are going to just take it out of service and we are going to move those services onto FiOS. We have got parallel networks in way too many places now, so that is a pot of gold in my view. And then in other areas that are more rural and more sparsely populated, we have got LTE built that will handle all of those services and so we are going to cut the copper off there. We are going to do it over wireless.

Verizon’s efforts to rush a tariff change without adequate public notice or formal hearings brought complaints from affected customers, unions, and area politicians.

The Communications Workers of America called Verizon’s emergency “self-made.” The company could have begun repair work on Fire Island as early as last November, but instead only came to regulators earlier this month with its Voice Link proposal, while much of the western half of the island remains out of service.

CWA officials are concerned Verizon is using Hurricane Sandy as an excuse to carry out its broader agenda of abandoning rural New York’s landline infrastructure in favor of wireless service.

“Playing on sympathy for the plight of customers whom it has left without service for more than six months, Verizon proposes to implement broad, generic rules that go to the core of its obligation to serve,” said CWA vice president Chris Shelton.

The union considers Verizon’s wireless alternative less adequate than the wireline facilities Verizon wants to abandon. The CWA wants the PSC to study Voice Link’s performance during times of peak cellular usage times, power outages, adverse weather, and inadequate reception.

Thomas Barraga, a legislator in Suffolk County, says his constituents with Voice Link service are already unhappy with its performance and reliability.

“Residents and business owners who had Voice Link installed after Sandy say the connection is unstable and unreliable, and doesn’t provide for DSL Internet or fax service,” Barraga wrote in a letter to the PSC.

“Internet service is so much a part of everyday life it should be consider a basic service and they should be mandated to provide this as well,” writes Fire Island resident Robert Gonzalez. “They should provide this for the same fees and usage rates as they had previously been charging.  As of today they are price gouging.  Prior to Sandy we paid approximately $50 per month for unlimited Internet access.  Now they are putting low limits on our usage for the same $50 per month with severe penalties for going over.  You can opt for higher usage plans at a much greater cost and they are not offering an unlimited plan.”

Stop the Cap! also continues to hear from Fire Island residents about their dissatisfaction with the service. Among the newest complaints we have received:

• “It doesn’t work with collect calls and you cannot dial “0” for operator assistance;”
• “I have to dial 10 digits for all calls, seven digit dialing no longer works even though it did before;”
• “Call Waiting and Caller ID often do not work, and my unit does not ring for incoming calls about 30% of the time and people have to keep calling me back;”
• “When you attempt to take a call when on the line with someone, you cannot get them back after answering a new call;”
• “I cannot use this with my home alarm system at all and the monitoring company keeps notifying police because they think my phone line was cut;”
• “If we had a major storm with three days of power being out, Verizon’s claim Voice Link will work for two hours without power means I would have to feed it up to 72 ‘AA’ batteries, costing more than what the phone line costs me every month;”
• “What does this do to our future? It makes us second class citizens without access to the Internet except through very expensive wireless capped usage plans that cost much more.”

The PSC ruled that allowing Verizon to deploy Voice Link on Fire Island during the peak tourist season will make sure adequate phone service is up and running as quickly as possible. But the commission also made it clear it is unwilling to approve Verizon’s request to extend the service further into rural New York without a thorough review of its performance and customer reaction.