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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The AARP was surprised to learn Idaho was considering loosening the rules imposed on the state’s phone companies to complete repairs on out of service landlines within 24 hours. The organization, which represents the elderly, says the new rules are a serious threat to older Idahoans who are the least likely to have a cell phone and require landlines in case of an emergency.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission is considering relaxing regulations governing service outages at the behest of CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, two of the state’s largest phone companies. Both phone companies argue that consumers have cell phone alternatives and do not need rapid repair of landline service. The companies also do not want to face penalties from regulators over incomplete or delayed repairs to out of service landlines.

CenturyLink claims the declining number of landline customers justifies the reduced regulations on the state’s phone companies.

But the AARP argued otherwise in opposing comments filed last week:

• Give telephone companies twice as long to repair outages (from 24 hours to 48 hours), and even more time if they occur over the weekend.  Opposing the change, AARP reminds the PUC of the importance of landlines to the elderly, and the fact that home and health emergencies also occur over the weekend.
• Remove any penalties to telephone companies for not restoring service within the allotted period of time.  Currently if service is not restored within the repair interval, customers can receive a one month service credit.  AARP says removing the penalty leaves little incentive for timely repairs and erodes consumer protections.
• Lower benchmark for fixing outages. Currently, at least 90% of service outage reports must be fixed, the proposed changes would lower that to 80%.  AARP says the lower benchmark could mean more consumers going without crucial service for a longer period of time.

Other claims made by CenturyLink – such as the assertion that its ability to deploy broadband suffers because its personnel are unreasonably diverted to repair work – are unproven and largely irrelevant to its obligation to maintain reliable telephone services, says AARP.

The elderly advocacy group argues the little known case is one more example of the need for Idaho to establish a Utility Consumer Advocate Office to ensure residential consumers are represented in complex regulatory matters.  Idaho is the only state in the West without such an office and one of a handful nationwide.

Pendleton County, W.V.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The company eventually repaired service early Sunday morning.

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

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

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

CenturyLink wants to repeal a 1993 Idaho rule that requires phone companies to repair service outages within 24 hours or provide one month of service for customers at no charge.

The phone company is lobbying the state Public Utilities Commission to be exempted from the rule that its predecessor Qwest/US West lived under for nearly 20 years. (CenturyLink acquired Qwest.)

CenturyLink says consumers no longer need their phone lines repaired in such a short time, and the company says the rule in hurting their business.

A "temporary" phone cable installed along the top of a wire fence.

“Today, a substantial majority of basic local service customers are not cut off from communication and are not out-of-service in the event their wireline telephone is not working,” the company argued.

Besides, CenturyLink claims, wireless providers are not subject to the same rule, giving them an unfair competitive advantage.

CenturyLink already has a repair exemption for customers who experience service outages due to a natural disaster, during the weekend, or one caused by the customer’s own actions. But now the company wants more, telling the commission most people will simply switch to cell phones while their landline remains out of service.

Despite the apparent contradiction that delivering reduced service is better for consumers, the PUC has been negotiating a compromise, offering to eliminate the service credit requirement and extend the window for repairs to 48 hours.

Before they do, they might want to review CenturyLink’s performance in Arizona, where the company has been caught installing repaired phone lines in pavement cracks and atop public roadways.

The PUC staff questioned claims made by both CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, another phone company that supports the repeal of the repair rules.

“CenturyLink argues that a large percentage of customers now have access to wireless and broadband voice services,” the staff report says. “For CenturyLink’s legacy Qwest customers located in urban areas, this may be true. It may not be true for customers in the very rual parts of CenturyLink’s service territory. When wireline service fails, few, if any, alternative communication services are available in some rural areas.”

The PUC staff also argued the impact on small business in Idaho could be significant. Small businesses still rely overwhelmingly on traditional landline services to conduct business and process credit card payments. Prolonged outages could create significant economic harm for affected customers.

The commission is taking comments on the proposed settlement of Case # CEN-T-12-01 through May 31.

Comcast suffered another nationwide e-mail meltdown Wednesday afternoon when customers discovered their messages were no longer getting through.

Customers pounded Comcast’s support forums looking for answers, but it took awhile for a Comcast spokesperson to finally acknowledge there was a problem.

“We’re aware that Comcast residential Internet customers may not be able to log in to e-mail or may experience delays with e-mail at this time,” said spokesman Jeff Alexander. “Our engineers are working to determine the root cause and are making progress.”

Although no mail appears to have been lost, Comcast customers were not happy with another service outage.

“It seems like at least once a month there is some sort of problem with Comcast’s e-mail servers,” writes Tom Judall, a Stop the Cap! reader and Comcast customer. “This was just the latest and our company uses Comcast Business Class service and was also impacted.”

The outage lasted approximately five hours, with a considerable backlog of messages reaching customers overnight Thursday.

Now some customers are contacting Comcast looking for some credit.

“I think this company owes more than excuses for yet another outage,” Judall said. “How about some credit, which might be an incentive to work harder to fix these issues once and for all.”

Judall is still waiting for a response from a message he e-mailed to Comcast customer service.

In general, Comcast will grant service credit requests for outages lasting several hours, but only when a customer contacts them to request it.