Tom Maguire

Recently, Stop the Cap! published stories about Verizon’s decision to discontinue traditional wired landline service for approximately 500 customers on Fire Island and offer them a wireless alternative called Voice Link. This is an important change for Verizon and our customers, and we wanted to clarify several points about the service and how Verizon is deploying it.

In places like Fire Island, New York and some communities along the Jersey Shore, such as Mantoloking and Seaside Heights, Verizon evaluated the extent of the damage to its facilities – which in many cases were literally washed away by Super Storm Sandy – and conducted extensive research before deciding the best course of action to take in terms of restoration.

Fire Island is a popular beach community with only a few hundred year-round residents, but the population swells each summer. Verizon’s equipment on the eastern side of the island was not too heavily impacted, so repairs were made and services restored.

On the western side of the Island, however, a large percentage of Verizon’s copper facilities were damaged beyond repair.

We studied the voice traffic on and off the island and where it was originating from on both Verizon’s wireline and wireless networks.  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.  This made it clear that people had already made the decision as to what technology works best. They had abandoned copper long before Sandy.

Where Sandy did the most damage on Fire Island.

Another part of Verizon’s analysis looked at the number of permanent residents on Fire Island, which number about 500, and the costs that Verizon would incur to install and connect new landline facilities there.  It would range from $4.8 million to more than $6 million. 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.

Verizon’s commitment is to provide our customers with voice service, and Voice Link is another way that Verizon is using technology to reliably deliver on that commitment for customers. And Voice Link does so by using wireless technology that has been proven effective over the last 20 plus years.

Verizon will maintain the copper network where it makes customer service and business sense to do so.  Please keep in mind that the vast majority of our copper customers have no issues at all with their service; we are only considering the universe of customers where the copper network is not supporting their requirements.  Again, the exception is the storm-impacted areas in the western portion of Fire Island and a few New Jersey Barrier communities where copper facilities were damaged beyond repair.  In these locations Voice Link will be the single voice option available to customers. Verizon will offer these customers the opportunity to use our state-of-the-art, tried and tested wireless network at the same rate (or better) that they pay today.

Here is how Verizon Voice Link works with existing home phones.

Some additional points for clarification:

• The service does offer a variety of popular calling features including Call Waiting and Caller ID with Name.  Some articles mistakenly reported to the contrary;
• Another article cited a Communications Daily piece that incorrectly reported 40,000 people participated in a blind test of Voice Link. Actually, that test group consisted of 20 people;
• Current Voice Link models include a rechargeable battery that offers 36 hours of standby and two hours of voice service. Future devices will work with standard AA batteries, giving customers an easy alternative for replacing batteries and maintaining communications in an extended power outage;
• Although the device is not presently data capable, the team is working to change that. Nevertheless we have always said that it was not Verizon’s original intent to use Voice Link for customers with DSL. If a customer had an issue with their copper and they had DSL, we would repair the copper.  Unfortunately Sandy changed these plans for a handful of customers on Fire Island and the New Jersey Barrier where the copper is beyond repair.

What’s the Deal With Copper?

In areas where Verizon’s fiber and copper network ran side-by-side, Verizon began to ask certain copper customers with a history of trouble to move their service to fiber. In some cases the equipment supporting the copper service was so outdated that we could not even find replacement parts because the equipment had been discontinued. The objective was to improve service quality and customer satisfaction using the best communications network, and the result was clear: the program has been very successful. More than 300,000 customers migrated to Verizon’s fiber-optic network.  These customers enjoy super-reliable, faster fiber at the same rates they were paying all along.

In non-fiber areas, Verizon developed Voice Link to take advantage of wireless technology to address voice customers served on the copper network who have had chronic repairs issues.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon Voice Link Keeps Customers Connected After Hurricane Sandy 5-31-13.flv[/flv]

After Sandy hit, Verizon realized that wireless technology also would be an ideal solution for customers in areas the storm destroyed or severely damaged. It has helped us reconnect hundreds of people and businesses. Don’t take our word for it. See what these customers have to say. (3 minutes)

Tom Maguire is Verizon’s senior vice president of network operations support.

A law establishing a voluntary, national emergency alert system to give localized text warning messages to cell phone users about severe weather, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and missing children has generated conspiracy theories and complaints from some on the political right who suspect the system is designed to help President Obama promote his political agenda.

At issue are “Presidential Alert” text messages disseminated to cell phone users. For the Daily Caller, this was all too much:

To be fair, Obama’s texts are for big emergencies and stuff, like this:

“There is a big meteor hurtling to Earth that will kill us all!”

And this:

“Some folks in Washington are trying to stop me from saving helpless children with common sense gun control legislation, and also from giving you more free stuff. Help!”

Stop the Cap! has received more than 75 e-mail messages from concerned citizens that the “Obama Alerts” are the next stage of the “Kenyan Muslim Socialist Takeover of the U.S.,” to quote one message.

Why the alarm? This snarky article from Engadget did not help and riled up some on the right:

AT&T has begun rolling out Wireless Emergency Alerts updates for iPhone 4S and 5, so you won’t be the last folks to know if the entire northern hemisphere is about to be covered in ice à la Day After Tomorrow. You’ll receive a notification from the carrier when your update is ready, but only if you’re using iOS 6.1 or higher. Once installed, AMBER and Emergency alerts are automatically sent to your phone unless you switch them off via Settings, but you can’t disable Presidential alerts. WEA messages are always free of charge, so you don’t have to worry about going over your texting limit when notified that you need to get the hell out of dodge.

Missing from this week’s discussion was the total cost to taxpayers to enable the text alerts. The Warning, Alert and Response Network Act of 2006 allocated $106 million to study, develop, and enable the text message warnings now sent by almost every cell phone provider in the U.S.

Some cell phone customers may have already received warning messages, typically during severe weather events. The messages are sent free of charge and do not eat into your texting allowance.

Although the law could have better labeled “Presidential Alerts” as something less eyebrow-raising, such as “critical public service warnings,” the WARN Act does not enable the Obama Administration to begin sending short messages lobbying Americans for gun control.

They have Twitter accounts for that.

One more fact to consider: the WARN Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006.

Optimum Wi-Fi is available from thousands of “hotspots” across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. You can find them by starting your Wi-Fi device and viewing the available networks in range. The network name will be ‘optimumwifi’.

Cablevision broadband subscribers may soon get free Optimum Wi-Fi service on New Jersey commuter trains and inside railway stations, if the NJ Transit board approves an agreement with the cable company.

On Wednesday, the board will vote on a 20-year contract with Cablevision to build and maintain a wireless network entirely at the cable company’s expense and offer NJ Transit free use of its facilities to assist in its operations.

With more than two-thirds of all rail commuters using Internet service during their travels, the network will vastly improve Wi-Fi access and offload data traffic from nearby cellular towers.

Providing Wi-Fi on trains has proved more difficult than Cablevision and the transit group originally thought.

The NJ Transit system first issued a “request for proposals” from interested Wi-Fi vendors back in 2010. Three years later, the transportation agency finally chose Cablevision over Illinois-based RAILband Group.

Cablevision has also been dragging its feet installing Wi-Fi on the Long Island Railroad and Metro North, despite agreeing to offer service by 2011.

“Wi-Fi on the trains is complicated,” explained Tad Smith, Cablevision president of local media.

On a March 2013 conference call with Wall Street analysts, he admitted the service is still not up and running, but should be sometime in the future.

“We are in active, productive, very positive conversations with the trains,” said Smith. “I am optimistic for the future.”

The project in New Jersey is not anticipated to be complete until 2016. Wi-Fi will first be made available in railway stations. Individual railway cars will then gradually get the service.

Cablevision now provides its Optimum Wi-Fi service as a benefit exclusively for subscribers. Non-subscribers are limited to three 10-minute sessions per 30-day period, with a further limit of one 10-minute session per day.

The MTA required Cablevision to provide “reasonable” access to non-Cablevision subscribers, which may include daily, weekly, or monthly access passes at an additional cost. But no pricing or further details are now available.

NJ Transit is the nation’s largest statewide public transportation system providing more than 895,000 weekday trips on 240 bus routes, three light rail lines and 12 commuter rail lines. It is the third largest transit system in the country with 165 rail stations, 60 light rail stations and more than 18,000 bus stops linking major points in New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia.

An older Comcast Wireless Gateway (Model 2)

Comcast customers may soon find themselves providing free Internet access to other Comcast customers under a new initiative announced today that will turn millions of homes into Wi-Fi hotspots.

The “xfinitywifi” project will activate a second 15-25Mbps Wi-Fi signal from Comcast’s XB2 and XB3 wireless gateways that any Comcast broadband customer can reach as long as they stay within 250-300 feet of the gateway.

“We’ve been able to add certain feature functionality to the firmware of our devices,” Tom Nagel, senior vice president of business development, told CED. “The way its architected is we sort of logically split the modem in two. On the private side, you still get the same things. You can do your own security, you can manage, you can do port forwarding and all the things that no one really understands but are available to you. On the public side what happens is it’s logically a separate network. We actually provision a separate service flow to that cable modem for the public side. If that public side uses up what we’ve given them, there is no getting from someone else.”

In simplified terms, Comcast is opening up a second dedicated Internet connection for its public Wi-Fi service that will not share your existing broadband service. The two networks will co-exist from the wireless gateway, and although the available bandwidth cannot be combined to increase connection speed, customers do have the option of connecting various wireless devices to either the home Wi-Fi or public Wi-Fi connection. The public Wi-Fi service is exempt from usage measurement, caps, and/or consumption-based billing at this time. (Comcast last year suspended usage caps in all of its service areas except Nashville and Tucson.)

In beta tests, Comcast claims customers did not object to sharing their Wi-Fi wireless gateways as long as it did not affect their speed and protected their privacy.

Nagel says the service was designed to address both concerns, noting a 50Mbps Blast customer will still have full access to 50Mbps service, regardless of how many wireless visitors are connected to the customer’s gateway.

“There’s also no leakage of the public and private security functions as well,” Nagel said. “We do two totally different security regimes in the box and there’s really no way to get in between the two. We do provide people the ability to opt out of the service but there have been very few people that have done that, like sub fractions of 1 percent.”

Comcast enables the new service with a firmware upgrade automatically sent to customers when an area is ready for a Wi-Fi launch. Customers in Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Boston; Northern Virginia, Chicago, Atlanta; Delaware; and California will likely be among the first to receive the new service.

Some customers do have a problem with Comcast charging them for equipment Comcast is appropriating for its own benefit.

“This is a fine deal for Comcast, which can keep charging customers $7 a month for their gateway and benefit from millions of new hotspots they did not have to build themselves,” said Comcast customer David Tate. “If customers get wise and buy their own [gateway/cable modem], Comcast’s new Wi-Fi service will begin losing hotspots as customers return the equipment to avoid the fee. They should be charging a lot less or nothing at all for equipment if they want us to host their hotspots.”

Tate also believes Comcast will ruin its own service if they attempt to bring usage caps back.

“If Comcast brings back the cap, I wouldn’t want anyone else sharing my connection and I would avoid using Comcast’s Wi-Fi if they counted that usage against my allowance,” Tate explained. “If they exempt the wireless service from caps, customers can just connect to that network to avoid the cap so they would have a big loophole.”

A Verizon Wireless upgrade that was supposed to fix bugs and introduce multi-screen, multi-window multitasking and new camera and image-related features to the popular Samsung Galaxy S3 instead has killed the phone’s 4G performance and dramatically decreased battery life. There are also reports some Verizon Wireless customers are finding themselves auto-enrolled in an unwanted caller ID with name add-on feature ($2.99/month) that leaves the phone connected to 3G or 4G service even when using Wi-Fi.

It was not an auspicious moment for Big Red, never fast with phone updates, particularly when Sprint customers earlier received a similar upgrade with no ill-effects.

Your editor spent two days last week attempting to mitigate Verizon’s mistakes, including several hours inside multiple Verizon Wireless store locations and talking to their national customer support center. In the end, it resulted in not one, but two factory refurbished phone exchanges and a $20 service credit for data service effectively disabled by a firmware upgrade.

This nightmare has a name: JZO54K.I535VRBMD3 — a software update so plagued with bugs, Verizon reportedly pulled it over the weekend after customers complained it ruined 4G wireless data service, along with the phone’s performance. The 128MB update has been available for about a week for those regularly checking their phones for software updates, and some customers began being prompted to install it last Friday.

So how can you tell if you are affected? Choose Settings -> About Device and check the “Build Number” visible at the bottom of the screen. If it ends in VRBMD3, you may be impacted. Not every customer is reporting problems, which may mean some phones are not affected or the performance degradation has been dismissed as a temporary reception problem or has only subtly affected low-bandwidth applications and has gone unnoticed.

Symptoms

1. Your wireless data signal strength meter on the phone suddenly shows much poorer reception than before the update;
2. Your battery life has declined significantly and the battery is very warm to the touch;
3. You have trouble loading web pages or accessing multimedia content with long buffering pauses or sudden loss of reception in places where signals used to be adequate;
4. Messaging services seem unstable with frequent disconnects;
5. Your phone drops from 4G to 3G service and stays connected at 3G (or less) speeds until you reset the phone;
6. Using “Speed Test” apps result in “Network Communication Issue” errors or extremely long test times with very high ping rates, very slow/inconsistent download speeds, and trouble measuring upload speeds;
7. You find icons for both Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G wireless service at the top of your phone at the same time;
8. You suddenly find your account billed for Caller ID plus Name service at $2.99 a month, despite not requesting this service.

Phillip “Verizon turned my 4G phone into a 1G phone” Dampier

The more of these symptoms you experience, the greater the chance Verizon’s update for the S3 has temporarily left your phone a shadow of its former self.

Verizon officially recognized the wireless connectivity problem May 31 when it released an internal bulletin acknowledging the software update is responsible. The company claims it has since stopped sending it out to S3 owners (we have not been able to confirm this ourselves).

Verizon blames Samsung for the defective update. Samsung blames Verizon, telling customers software upgrades are vetted, approved, and distributed exclusively by Verizon. Customers are left over a barrel until one or both companies assume responsibility and issue corrected firmware, which could take weeks.

Verizon Wireless’ technical support told Stop the Cap! the phone’s firmware is at the heart of the problem, and although it can sometimes get phones to be more tolerant of the software update, no number of factory resets, SIM card refreshes or replacements, or settings changes will fully correct the problem. Many customers can expect continued degraded 4G performance comparable to 3G speeds (or much worse) either because of slowed performance or an unstable connection until a fix is available.

The problem with multiple icons for both Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G service has to do with a single new app Verizon has forced on their customers. “Caller ID plus Name” was added to your app list in the latest update and is responsible for the dual data connections and reported instances of customers being auto-enrolled and billed for the service, even if they never specifically ran the app.

Bloatware is bad enough, but badly performing forced apps are worse. You can permanently disable the offending app and solve the double icon problem with this simple fix:

Enter Settings -> Application Manager, and select the “All” applications tab along the top. Find “Caller ID plus Name” in the list, select it, and you will see a button to “disable” the app. This may not resolve the problem of the app auto-enrolling you for a paid feature that costs $2.99 a month, so watch your bill.

Trouble

Affected customers with degraded service have several options:

1. If your phone is still under warranty, and most Galaxy S3 phones are, you can request a free handset replacement. Since Verizon created the problem, ask for a free shipping upgrade to overnight FedEx delivery. Your refurbished phone will arrive without a battery, SIM card, or back cover. Use the ones included with your original phone and your replacement handset should automatically activate. Immediately after powering up, your phone will offer a series of two or three Verizon firmware updates that you can defer. Until it can be verified Verizon has stopped pushing the defective update to customers, we recommend you avoid performing these firmware updates. If you don’t, and Verizon pushes the defective update to your replacement phone, it will likely perform no better than your original;
2. Request service credit for degraded/lost data service. Remember to also request credit, if applicable, for any Mobile Hotspot option, GPS travel, or other Verizon add-on that depends on a stable data network connection;
3. Indicate your displeasure that Verizon did not more thoroughly test the update before pushing it on customers.

Here are the suggested fixes Verizon may attempt on your phone, but we do not believe they correct the underlying problem — only updated software will:

• Removing the battery and “Refreshing/replacing the SIM card” may help refresh roaming rules or possibly correct a corrupted SIM card. Some customers reported this helped them get back data service they completely lost after the update, so it might help in certain cases, but probably will not correct the unstable 4G connection;
• Clearing the cache and cookies from the web browser is unlikely to have any effect on this problem;
• Changing the Mobile Networks setting to/from “Global” to “LTE/CDMA.” A few customers reported they got back some data service after toggling these options. The default on the Samsung Galaxy S3 running firmware from last fall was (and still remains) Global. We suspect the switch toggles the radio off and on, forcing a reconnect, which can bring back a 4G connection after the phone downshifts to 3G. But we don’t believe this will correct the speed/stability problem;
• A “factory reset” is frankly a waste of time. This will leave your phone with the same defective firmware. If you had symptoms before, you will likely still have them after resetting your phone.

If you are reluctant to part with your phone and avail yourself of any option other than requesting a service credit while Samsung and Verizon point fingers over who is responsible and and when a fix will arrive, you can make life with your phone a bit easier with these tips:

1. Stay on Wi-Fi when possible. Wi-Fi data performance was not affected by this software update;
2. Expect 30-40% reduced battery life. We suspect this (and the hot battery) is caused by the phone trying to deal with unstable 4G service, as if it was in a fringe reception zone. Keep a charger handy;
3. Try and get your phone to downshift to 3G by finding a weak reception spot (like a basement) and hope the phone drops (and remains) on 3G until it is rebooted. It appears 3G data speeds are not affected by the software bug;
4. Expect problems when using high bandwidth applications on Verizon’s LTE 4G service. We found video next to impossible to view on 4G, but audio streaming did seem to perform at lower bit rates.

Expect web browsing on 4G to be problematic on complex web pages, which may load incompletely. Try and do your browsing on mobile versions of websites or wait until you can find Wi-Fi.