Texas Town Slams Verizon’s ‘Continuous Decline’ Before Texas PUC

Verizon’s wireline and wireless service is “an inconvenience” and “a very dangerous kind of situation,” Klussman said. The town experienced at least 30 outages in the last year and a half, said Klussman. To receive a cellular signal, people have to drive their pick-up trucks to the nearest hill, he said, creating hazards for those who need to reach 911. “Cell phones in our community work when you're on the top of the hill, but they do not work probably where you live or so on,” he said. There were two outages in the last week alone, he said. Verizon attributes these outages to lightning, wind, heat, hail and such events, he said, and service has gone from bad to worse. He said he has sent 150 signatures to the commission from those affected by the outages. “We feel Verizon has taken no action to make a difference,” said Klussman. “In their own admission, they're using technology that’s out of date."

The commission heard from these town representatives and some from Verizon independent of any docket and in response to repeated town complaints directed to Commissioner Kenneth Anderson’s office, his staff told us. Anderson first raised the concern in an early July commission meeting, staff said. At the meeting, Anderson said he first heard complaints in early summer.

Verizon representatives acknowledged failures and described ways to make amends at the Friday commission meeting. It’s “our responsibility,” Verizon Operations Director Joel Peterson said, acknowledging outages continued that week. Verizon had “no intention of taking issue with what these [Prairie Mountain] gentlemen have said,” he told commissioners, saying “service quality has not been up to our standard.” Lightning and weather have complicated the copper cables in the region, Verizon representatives said. The company will be “redesigning the entire repeater structure” and regrounding the 22-mile route in question, Peterson said of equipment installed 16 years ago. As of Aug. 1, Verizon has established a seven-day dispatch rather than the prior Monday-through-Friday schedule, which was partly responsible for the length of the March outages, Peterson said.

"You know, we expect better in Texas,” PUC Chairman Donna Nelson told Verizon’s Peterson and Regulatory and Governmental Affairs Vice President Doug Fulp. She called it “kind of ridiculous” that Klussman and his colleague had to travel from Prairie Mountain to the commission meeting. Commissioner Anderson is “disappointed it had to come to this,” he said. “Enforcement actions need to be taken when appropriate.” Verizon may have violated Texas’ USF clauses due to the length of the outages, Anderson said. He said the reliability rules, which prohibit outages of more than eight hours, would apply and pointed to a March outage that reportedly lasted five days. Fulp confirmed Verizon receives USF support in the region, about $6.58 per line.

"Verizon is fully committed to meeting the service needs of customers in Prairie Mountain,” a spokesman told us. “Recent rain storms and lightning strikes damaged some Verizon facilities, affecting phone service in the area. Over the past two months, we have replaced damaged sections of cable and made other repairs that will enable our network to better withstand severe weather and, as a result, improve service for our Prairie Mountain customers."

Klussman said Verizon has said for a decade that “we're going to fix the problem,” without substantial improvement. Peterson pledged to visit Prairie Mountain in September. “We're going to create a relationship that hasn’t been there,” Peterson said. “This is not our track record across the state.” Nelson questioned the value of the service. “Clearly you shouldn’t be paying for service you're not getting,” she said. She ordered Verizon to submit a report on the problems at the PUC’s next open meeting and then another report a month later outlining how the problems have been fixed. Verizon is also facing service scrutiny in the Mid-Atlantic (CD Aug 15 p1) and New York State (CD Aug 1 p6).