From the Desk of Ralph Nader

21 August 2013

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

Dear Prime Minister:

I read with interest that you are considering allowing Verizon Communications to operate in Canada with unique acquisition rights.

Bad idea.

Before you proceed any further, I suggest that you read a report by the highly regarded Center for Tax Justice and Good Jobs First titled, “Unpaid Bills: How Verizon Shortchanges Government Through Tax Dodging and Subsidies.”

Bottom line: Verizon is one of the country’s most aggressive corporate tax dodgers.

The report found that Verizon enjoyed some $14 billion in federal and state corporate income tax subsidies in the 2008-2010 period, even though it earned $33.4 billion in pre-tax U.S. income during that time. At the federal level, Verizon should have paid about $11.4 billion at the statutory rate of 35 per cent during the three-year period. Instead, it actually got $951 million in rebates, putting its federal tax subsidies at $12.3 billion. Its effective federal tax rate was 2.9 per cent.

The report found that at the state level, Verizon should have paid about $2.3 billion in corporate income taxes during the period but it paid only $866 million. Its aggregate state rate was only 2.6 per cent, far below the weighted state average rate of 6.8 per cent. This gave it state tax subsidies of about $1.4 billion.

Verizon also used a special tax loophole called the Reverse Morris Trust to avoid paying about $1.5 billion in federal, state and local taxes on the sale of its landline assets in various states.

The report found that Verizon also aggressively seeks state and local tax subsidies through credits, abatements and exemptions.

There is no centralized reporting on these subsidies, but the report documents $180 million in special tax breaks and grants Verizon and Verizon Wireless received in 13 states.

In addition to aggressively dodging taxes, Verizon also overtly rips off our federal government.

In April 2011, for example, Verizon paid $93.5 million to settle whistleblower charges that it had billed the government for “tax-like” surcharges it wasn’t entitled to impose on the government. Hidden surcharges on communication services have long been an unwelcome cost to business and consumers, and the General Services Administration had negotiated a firm, fixed-price contract with limited surcharges precisely to avoid being hit with hidden surcharges, the whistleblower alleged.

“Verizon was not only charging the government for the costs associated with communication services, but it also was pumping up its revenues by charging the government for Verizon’s own property taxes and other costs of doing business,” said Colette Matzzie, a Washington, D.C., attorney with Phillips & Cohen LLP, who represented the whistleblower. “Under federal law, Verizon was responsible for paying those costs, not the government.”

The settlement agreement covers the period from 2004 to 2010, when Verizon allegedly billed the government for a variety of surcharges including property tax surcharges, carrier cost recovery charges, state telecommunications relay service surcharges and public utility commission fee surcharges.

Question: why would you allow one of our country’s most aggressive tax dodgers, a company with a track record of overtly ripping off our government, into your country?

What’s bad for the United States will be bad for Canada.

Sincerely,

The meter is lurking

AT&T may soon approach your electricity provider to encourage the introduction of prepaid electrical service, powered by AT&T’s wireless network.

AT&T is looking beyond traditional cell phone service to keep profits flowing into its lucrative wireless business. A growing segment of revenue is anticipated to come from so-called “machine to machine” communications. One application, Meter Data Management (MDM), provides connectivity to wireless-enabled smart utility meters, and is expected to grow 300 percent to $221 million by 2014.

Although now uncommon in the United States, prepaying for electric service is found in many parts of the world where cash-strapped consumers tend to renege on the bill. With late and non-paying customers remaining a consequence of the current American economy, AT&T is encouraging utilities to adopt pay-for-use technology that will cut the 10 percent of late-payers off the grid and save utilities money spent to collect past-due bills.

AT&T argues the next generation of “smart meters” can do a lot more than report meter readings over a wireless network. The technology can be leveraged to offer risk-free utility service, targeting credit compromised customers and those seeking to avoid billing surprises from excessive energy use.

Customers switched to prepaid electric service fill their meter with an allotment of energy usage from prepaid top-up cards sold by area convenience stores, supermarkets and even street vendors. Customers can also use credit cards or authorize checking accounts to be debited on a regular basis. Customers who exceed their allowance quickly find their service shut off automatically, depending on state laws. Making a payment switches the power back on within minutes.

“Nearly 30 percent of people are on a prepay mobile plan in 2013,” said Ed Davalos, lead product marketing manager at AT&T, during a recent Greentech Media webinar. “That cannot be overlooked. The consumer has already changed.”

Getting utilities to adopt the system may require AT&T, in partnership with other vendors, to front some of the costs to switch to smart meter and prepaid billing technology. A study commissioned by AT&T found the biggest hurdle to adopting prepaid electric service is understanding who pays to implement it. One-third of American utility companies would launch prepaid service if it could be done for no or low-cost. Another one-third say they would seriously consider it if someone else put up the money to introduce it.

Since customers can only use energy they already paid to use, there is no payment risk to the utility company. AT&T estimates nearly 10 percent of all utility customers receive disconnect notices every month. The utilities eventually cut service to 3-5 percent of those who still don’t pay, which usually requires a truck to be sent to the customer’s home.

Using prepaid electric service offers utilities the power to switch off service at the office without a costly truck roll and prevent customers from running up an enormous past due balance. If just 10 percent of customers switched to prepaid electric service, AT&T estimates an average utility with 250,000 customers would save $5-15 million per year in costs. Those using prepaid service are so wary of exceeding their power allowance, they use about 11 percent less electricity than non-prepaid customers, reducing demand on electricity generation.

This cellular module is designed to fit within many power meters.

Customers enrolled in prepaid service get to check their energy usage and some utilities offer different rates depending on the time of day. That means cost-conscious customers might hold off doing laundry until rates drop overnight. Others might avoid air conditioning use in the late afternoons, when fluctuating power rates are typically at their highest.

Campbell McCool, chief marketing officer of SmartSynch said the actual costs to the wireless network to manage prepaid was “well under” $0.50 per meter, per month — and SmartSynch executives have offered it can be as little as pennies per meter, per month depending on volume.

Verizon is also involved in the business, announcing a partnership with eMeter to offer cloud-based, scalable MDM for utilities.

Forty-two percent of U.S. electric customers now have digital meters, up from less than 5 percent in 2008. In 2015, more than 50 percent will have them, according to one consultant.

With the introduction of smart meters come risks, warns some consumer advocates.

Last month, the U.S. power market regulator moved towards charging JPMorgan with manipulating higher fluctuating electricity prices with fraudulent trading schemes, impacting customers in California and the Midwest.

Third party electricity marketers have also become a problem in many deregulated power states, with come-ons ranging from rebate checks to introductory rates that expire and leave the customer paying skyrocketing electricity rates well above the cost of buying service direct from the local utility. Many also impose lengthy contracts with steep early termination fees.

Smart meters allow utility providers to conjure up a number of marketing programs, such as a “free power day” offered once per week. Customers signing up for promotions like that typically avoid running the washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher except on days when they won’t pay to use the appliances. Others have to wait until after midnight for savings to kick in from overnight energy discounts.

But many of the programs have been designed to promise more savings than they deliver. Power providers have been criticized for aggressive door-to-door marketing, fraudulent utility switches reminiscent of days when phone customers found their long distance carrier switched without their permission, and tricky promotional checks that, once deposited, commit a customer to several years of service with a provider at whatever rates they choose to charge.

But lack of savings isn’t the only problem. In Texas, utilities can cut power service to customers within 24 hours of warning them they have exhausted their prepaid balance.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABS-CBN Regulators promoting use of prepaid electricity 10-25-12.flv[/flv]

In the Philippines, prepaid electric service was introduced to cope with customer complaints about high electricity rates. ABS-CBN News reports the meters don’t cut the price of electricity, they just help customers better manage bills by suggesting ways to reduce usage. (Oct. 2012) (2 minutes)

Verizon Wireless sees enormous new revenue opportunities in the “machine to machine” applications business, using its LTE 4G wireless network to exchange data between you and the companies you do business with.

Fran Shammo, Verizon’s chief financial officer, noted that State Farm Insurance is just one example where your wireless carrier and insurance company will quietly collect data about your driving habits based on the car seat law in california and share the information for marketing purposes and to micromanage your driving insurance rates based on your real driving habits.

State Farm Insurance recently signed an agreement with Verizon subsidiary Hughes Telematics, which today embeds microchips into vehicles that can communicate over Verizon’s nationwide wireless network. In the near future, State Farm Insurance customers’ driving habits will be automatically tracked by Verizon Wireless with certain data shared with the insurance company to personalize your auto insurance rates.

Shammo

“If you know the car insurance industry today, they do everything based on actuarial studies and make you pay based on your driving habits, charging a premium specific to your driving,” Shammo told investors at the Oppenheimer 16th Annual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference. “We will accumulate that data, analyze that, and send that off to State Farm.”

Visit Car’s Cash For Junk Clunkers at 314 S Union Ave #230, Springfield, MO 65802 (417) 263-6523 to avail their cash for cars.

With the contracts signed, State Farm hopes to expand its Drive Safe & Save program nationwide later this year. It will be voluntary, for now, for customers driving OnStar-equipped vehicles from General Motors and Ford’s Sync system. Others can take part with Hughes’ In-Drive tracking device, installed by the customer. Customers choosing In-Drive will have to pay a monthly fee for the device ranging from $5-15 a month.

Verizon Wireless will benefit from tracking information about where customers are, have been, and are likely to go in the future. State Farm will not benefit from that level of precision, however. Verizon will purposely “fuzz” up those details, depicting vehicles only within a 40-mile radius. But State Farm will still know a great deal about your personal driving habits, which can directly affect your insurance premium.

State Farm says its program is primarily intended to deliver discounts to safe drivers (sometimes up to 50 percent off the highest risk category drivers, such as teens), not penalize unsafe ones. But the insurance company does disclose it will increase rates of policyholders caught driving over their selected mileage category or if they are ever tracked driving 80mph or over for any reason, regardless of the posted speed limit.

The amount of the discount is dependent on a number of factors, mostly based on mileage driven, the time of day the vehicle is on the road, and the rate which one accelerates and brakes while driving. But State Farm agents admit other factors can also penalize you. Making a lot of left turns will cut your discount — more accidents occur during those. When that unfortunately happens, you can go to this web-site. How hard of a turn you make also matters – squealing tires and a fast turn will earn a spanking for aggressive driving. Do you often pass other vehicles? That can hurt your discount as well.

Progressive pitches its “Snapshot” drive tracking system.

If you don’t drive the car at all, State Farm will, not surprisingly, praise your driving habits and boost your discount. A car driven under 500 miles a year may get a 30% discount. Drive it close to the annual average of 11,000 miles and your discount plummets to 11%. Long commutes hurt the most. A policyholder driving 16,000 miles a year will only receive 1% off.

Wherever you go, Verizon Wireless and State Farm, among other insurers, will be watching and that bothers some privacy experts.

“It’s a slippery slope,” Paul Stephens, an official with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, told the Wall Street Journal. While insurers say they don’t track routes driven, Mr. Stephens fears that as programs expand and get more commonplace, insurers may wind up with “a very detailed log of your whereabouts throughout the day.”

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter joined over 1.4 million other Progressive insurance customers driving with Snapshot — a competing drive tracking system. He concluded it felt like driving with a nanny.

It beeped at me when I braked too hard or floored it up the ramp to Highway 40. Each beep, I knew, was a demerit that could mean a higher insurance quote.

Like some other programs, Progressive lets you keep track of your performance on its website, measuring your braking, acceleration and mileage. It grades you as excellent, good or “opportunity,” which is a nice way of saying “no discount for you, bub.” It also awards little online merit badges. I got one for “alien abduction,” since I left town and didn’t drive for a week. When I finished the tryout, the system offered me an initial 12 percent discount from Progressive’s normal rate. I’m considering this device.

Privacy experts also caution that those refusing to install the currently voluntary drive tracking systems may eventually be lumped into high risk driving pools because insurers may conclude those drivers have something to hide.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Progressive Snapshot 8-13.flv[/flv]

Progressive’s omnipresent spokesperson “Flo” introduces drivers to Snapshot, the insurance company’s driver tracking system. (1 minute)

“You can see who is defensive and who is aggressive,” said Richard Hutchinson, Progressive’s general manager for usage-based insurance. “It gives us very powerful data from an insurance standpoint.”

“If people choose to (sign up for the program), that’s up to them,” said Wisconsin state Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton), a longtime privacy advocate. “But I would just caution people to know exactly what they’re getting into.  I have huge privacy concerns (about the program). They are offering a 5 percent discount and I would assume somebody’s rates are going up somewhere else to pay for that.”

Wisconsin-based American Family Insurance takes driver tracking to an even more personal level with its Teen Safe Driver system, which uses DriveCam technology to maintain a comprehensive video and data record of driving habits. If the system detects unsafe driving, a professional driving coach will automatically receive a video file showing the incident, leading to a personal follow-up to discuss the dangerous driving.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TeenSafe Drivecam 8-13.flv[/flv]

American Family Insurance’s TeenSafe Driver Program uses an in-car camera to watch teen drivers and automatically sends video of incidents to a professional driving coach if an infraction or unsafe driving is detected. Could insurance companies adopt similar technology for adult drivers for on-the-spot rate adjustments in the future? (3 minutes)

Erpenbach

“Armed with this kind of data, an insurance company could eventually theoretically adjust a driver’s insurance rates on the spot, or even notify the policyholder they intend to cancel their insurance,” says Sam Underwood, who feels the insurance industry will soon police more driving infractions than local traffic cops. “While a safe driver may feel they have nothing to hide, their driving details could be subject to disclosure under a criminal or civil subpoena as part of any legal action, driving related or not.”

Ten years ago, privacy experts worried about automated toll collection devices like E-Z Pass being used to track driving habits. Underwood says insurance companies will take that to a whole different level.

“They have a vested interest in reducing insurance claims and payouts and there is probably nothing wrong with that because who wants to be in an accident,” Underwood says. “But under current laws, they are the judge, jury and executioner and can subjectively use this data to set rates as they please. It starts with a tantalizing discount but ends with a compulsory system that will make cell companies like Verizon Wireless a lot of money and let them keep a copy of collected data for who knows what purpose.”

The Wall Street Journal calls the programs “usage based insurance,” priced according to how customers actually drive. But there have been some familiar arguments and “family discussions” that have followed the regular report cards and insurance renewal premiums that arrive after enrolling into the tracking programs:

One day recently, Mr. Scharlau logged onto his State Farm account to learn he so far had earned “A+” grades for left-hand turns and for not topping 80 miles per hour, but only “B+” for braking, acceleration and time of day his Expedition was on the road. Mr. Scharlau said he and his wife now find themselves chatting “about our own driving and what we see around us: ‘Oops, did we just lose points?'”

Shammo says Verizon Wireless is just beginning to profit from this type of machine to machine application. It has well-positioned itself with the acquisition of Hughes Telematics, which develops chipsets that makes it simple to move data over Verizon’s wireless network. Shammo admits it costs just pennies on the dollar to transport information from applications like drive tracking devices. But Verizon isn’t satisfied just charging for data traffic. The real earnings come from processing the data Verizon collects, analyzes and transmits back to clients like State Farm.

“If you then take the next step, though, the value is really in the data in the cloud and how you can utilize data to do the analytics behind that,” Shammo said. “If you look at Hughes Telematics and what they are doing […], it’s not the transport through Verizon Wireless that really creates the average revenue per user increment on that machine to machine [traffic]. It’s all the other analytics behind that. The ARPU on that is $20 to $30 higher than what it would be on a machine-to-machine type application for just transport.”

Verizon Wireless considers machine to machine traffic still in its infancy and primed for more profits. That worries people like Sen. Erpenbach who wonders where it will all end.

“If I’m State Farm, sure, I want to know about any driving habit of my policyholders,” he said. “I would also love to know, if I’m State Farm, what everybody does in their houses (for home insurance purposes). And I’m sure health companies would love to see people’s grocery lists.”

Richard Miller from the Capitol Fax blog spent the weekend at the Illinois State Fair and might as well have left his AT&T cell phone at home, because the wireless giant’s network collapsed with an overload of traffic.

“Both days, after 5 o’clock in the afternoon, AT&T’s mobile phone service wouldn’t work,” Miller writes. “Calls in or out were sporadic at best, and texts took numerous attempts to work, if ever. Internet? Fugetaboutit. And when the nightly concert started, everything completely shut down. No calls, no texts, no nothing.”

How to improve AT&T service? Remove the rules that require them to provide it.

Miller reported friends attending the fair with him had no difficulties using Verizon Wireless, Sprint, or T-Mobile, so Miller concludes the problems were AT&T’s to own.

“There’s no excuse for the giant corporation’s lousy service,” said Miller.

Attendees with missing children or needing to make emergency calls were plain out of luck. Pay phones are long gone. The only alternative was finding someone with a phone not served by AT&T.

“[People] pay good money for the service and they have a right to expect that they can use their expensive communications devices at large annual events, where people get separated all the time,” said Miller.

Ironically, the Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) received at least $20,000 from AT&T in 2012 and is for wholesale deregulation of AT&T. The Illinois Partnership for the New Economy & Jobs, a front group for AT&T Illinois, noted that the farm bureau is all for “updating” Illinois state laws that take the hook off AT&T’s responsibility to serve every resident in the state. A preview of what that looks like was experienced by Miller and others at the state fairgrounds.

Verizon Voice Link

The New York State Public Service Commission has announced it will hold public hearings in Ocean Beach in Suffolk County, N.Y. to hear from angry Fire Island residents and others about their evaluation of Verizon’s controversial wireless landline replacement Voice Link, which Verizon hopes to eventually install in rural areas across its operating territories.

“Verizon needs to stop lying,” said Fire Island resident Debi May who lost phone service last fall after Hurricane Sandy damaged the local network. “Don’t tell me you can’t fix my landline service. Tell me you won’t.”

She is one of hundreds of Fire Island residents spending the summer without landline service, relying on spotty cellular service, or using Verizon’s wireless landline alternative Voice Link, which many say simply does not work as advertised. In July, the CWA asserted Verizon is trying to introduce Voice Link in upstate New York, including in the Catskills and in and around Watertown and Buffalo.

“I’ve been on the phone with Verizon all day,” Jason Little, owner of the popular Fire Island haunt Bocce Beach tells The Village Voice. The restaurant’s phone line and DSL service is down again. Just like last week. And three weeks before that. Like always, Verizon’s customer service representatives engage in the futility of scheduling a service call that will never actually happen. Verizon doesn’t bother to show up in this section of Fire Island anymore, reports Little.

“They never come,” he says. So he sits and waits for the service to work its way back on its own — the result of damaged infrastructure Verizon refuses to repair any longer. Until it does, accepting credit cards is a big problem for Little.

It’s the same story down the street at the beachwear boutique A Summer Place. Instead of showing customers the latest summer fashions, owner Roberta Smith struggles her away around Verizon’s abandonment of landline service. She even purchased the recommended wireless credit card machine to process transactions, but that only works as well as Verizon Wireless’ service on the island, which can vary depending on location and traffic demands.

Smith tells the newspaper at least half the time, Verizon’s wireless network is so slow the machine stops working. If she can’t reach the credit card authorization center over a crackly, zero bar Verizon Wireless cell phone, the customer might walk, abandoning the sale.

National Public Radio reports Verizon’s efforts to abandon landline service on Fire Island and in certain New Jersey communities is just the first step towards retiring rural landline service in high cost areas. But does Verizon Voice Link actually work? Local residents say it doesn’t work well enough. NPR allows listeners to hear the sound quality of Voice Link for themselves. (5 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

Verizon’s decision is making life hard for Fire Island’s small businesses.

The Village Voice notes Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam didn’t make the decision to scrap rural copper wire landline service to improve things for customers. He did it for the company.

“The decision wasn’t motivated by customer demand so much as McAdam’s interest in increasing Verizon’s profit margins,” the Voice writes.

Tom Maguire, Verizon’s point man for Voice Link, has not endeared himself with local residents by suggesting Fire Island shoppers should get around the credit card problem by bringing cash.

“Remember what happened to Marie Antoinette when she said ‘let them eat cake’,” suggested one.

For some customers who appreciate the phone company’s cost arguments, Verizon’s wireless alternative wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t work so bad.

“It has all the problems of a cellphone system, but none of the advantages,” Pat Briody, a homeowner on Fire Island for 40 years told NPR News.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who will tell you Voice Link is better than the copper wire,” says Steve Kunreuther, treasurer of the Saltaire Yacht Club.

Jean Ufer says her husbands’ pacemaker depends on landline service to report in on his medical condition.

“Voice Link doesn’t work here,” reports resident Jean Ufer, whose husband depends on a pacemaker that must “check in” with medical staff over a landline the Ufer family no longer has. “It constantly breaks down. Everybody who has it hates it. You can’t do faxes. You can’t do the medical stuff you need. We need what we had back.”

Residents who depended on unlimited broadband access from Verizon’s DSL service are being bill-shocked by Verizon’s only broadband replacement option – expensive 4G wireless hotspot service from Verizon Wireless.

Small business owner Alessandro Anderes-Bologna used to have DSL service from Verizon until Hurricane Sandy obliterated Verizon’s infrastructure across parts of the western half of Fire Island. Today he relies on what he calls poor service from Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network, which he claims is hopelessly overloaded because of tourist traffic and insufficient capacity. But more impressive are Anderes-Bologna’s estimates of what Verizon Wireless wants to charge him for substandard wireless broadband.

“My bill with Verizon Wireless would probably be in the range of $700-800 a month,” Anderes-Bologna said. That is considerably higher than the $29.99 a month Verizon typically charges for its fastest unlimited DSL option on Fire Island.

Despite the enormous difference in price, Verizon’s Maguire has no problems with Verizon Wireless’ prices for its virtual broadband monopoly on the landline-less sections of the island.

“It’s a closed community,” he says. “It’s the quintessential marketplace where you get to charge what the market will bear, so all the shops get to charge whatever they want.” And that’s exactly what Verizon is doing.

WCBS Radio reports Verizon is introducing Voice Link in certain barrier island communities in New Jersey. But the service lacks important features landline users have been long accustomed to having. (1 minute)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

In nearby New Jersey, Verizon’s efforts to introduce Voice Link has met with resistance from consumer groups, the state’s utility regulator, and the Rate Counsel. Over 1,400 customers on barrier island communities like Bay Head, Brick, and Mantoloking cannot get Verizon DSL or landline service any longer because Verizon refuses to repair damaged landlines.

Tom Maguire

“The New Jersey coast has been battered enough,” said Douglas Johnston, AARP New Jersey’s manager of advocacy. “The last thing we need is second-class phone service at the Shore. We are concerned that approval of Verizon’s plans could further the gap between the telecommunications ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and could create an incentive for Verizon to neglect the maintenance and repair of its landline phone network in New Jersey.”

In some cases, Verizon has told customers they can get landline phone service from Comcast, a competitor, instead.

State consumer advocates note that other utilities including cable operators have undertaken repair, replacement, and restoration of facilities in both New York and New Jersey without the challenges Verizon claims it has.

“Only Verizon, without evidentiary support, is seeking to jettison its obligations to provide safe, proper and adequate service to the public,” wrote the New Jersey Rate Counsel in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission.

New York Senator Phil Boyle, who represents Fire Island residents, is hosting a town hall meeting tonight to discuss the move by Verizon to replace copper-wire phone lines on Fire Island with Voice Link. The meeting will be held at the Ocean Beach Community House in Ocean Beach from 5-7pm.

The New York State Public Service Commission will be at the same location Saturday, Aug. 24 starting at noon for a public statement hearing to hear from customers about how Verizon Voice Link is working for them.

It is not necessary to make an appointment in advance or to present written material to speak at the public statement hearing. Anyone with a view about Voice Link, whether they live on the island or not are welcome to attend. Speakers will be called after completing a card requesting time to speak. Disabled persons requiring special accommodations may place a collect call to the Department of Public Service’s Human Resources Management Office at (518) 474-2520 as soon as possible. TDD users may request a sign language interpreter by placing a call through the New York Relay Service at 711 to reach the Department of Public Service’s Human Resource Office at the previously mentioned number.

Fire Island

Those who cannot attend in person at the Community House, 157-164 Bay Walk, Ocean Beach can send comments about Voice Link to the PSC online, by phone, or through the mail.

• E:Mail: [email protected]
• U.S. Mail: Secretary, Public Service Commission, Three Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York 12223-1350
• 24 Hour Toll-Free Opinion Line (N.Y. residents only): 1-800-335-2120

Your comments should refer to “Case 13-C-0197 – Voice Link on Fire Island.” All comments are requested by Sept. 13, 2013. Comments will become part of the record considered by the Commission and will be published online and accessible by clicking on the “Public Comments” tab.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Al Jazeera US islanders battle telecom giant 8-13-13.flv[/flv]

Al Jazeera reports Fire Island residents are fighting to keep their landlines, especially after having bad experiences with Verizon Voice Link. (3 minutes)