Southern California Phone Outages Signal Need For Upgraded System

100,000 customers throughout California lost land line phone service during severe storms. The state declared emergencies in numerous California counties, including Riverside and San Bernardino. During the storms between December 17 to January 4, storms soaked through to underground cables, disrupting service. AT&T had 70,000 complaints at the peak of the storm; Verizon had 32,000. Normally these outages are fixed within 24 hours, according to the PUC’s service quality standards. During this two and a half week storm period, AT&T and Verizon were unable to fix 90% of outages within that 24 hour window. Some customers were without phone service for as much as twelve days. Many of those people did not have cell phones.

Southern California Phone Outages Signal Need for Upgraded System

Have AT&T and Verizon neglected their land line networks? According to an article by Kimberly Pierceall, The Press-Enterprise, consumers, reform groups and telecommunications firms that lease copper telephone lines from AT&T and Verizon say the storm may have proven what they’ve suspected for years, that the two major carriers have neglected their basic copper networks and, as a result, their land-line customers. At the same time, both companies have expanded into more profitable cable, fiber and wireless services, the groups have noted.

“The copper network has taken second place,” said Sarah DeYoung, president and executive director of CALTEL, the California Association of Competitive Telecommunications Companies. Her group is an advocate for companies such as TelePacific and others that lease “the last mile” of copper from AT&T and Verizon. During the storms, those customers were without telephone and Internet service for five to seven days.

Who is responsible for fixing the networks? At this point the carrier is responsible. AT&T is responsible for the majority of wired networks in California, with Verizon coming in second. Independent companies take up the slack. Apparently these companies are falling short. According to Ms. Pierceall’s article, between October and January, the California Public Utilities Commission received 218 complaints from customers that their Verizon telephone was out of service. Another 392 complaints came from customers of AT&T. To be fair, during that storm period, complaint calls were about 10 times the average. Verizon had 32,000 pending trouble tickets and had to increase their work force by 73%. The employees worked 10-hour days, 6 days per week instead of the usual 40 hour work week. It took until January 29th for all the tickets to be resolved.

Should we put more money into the wired networks? With so many people switching to wireless phones only, is it worth it to fix a dying horse? The problem as I see it is that until the entire nation is wireless, we still need working wired networks. There is also the DSL issue. DSL is a wired system. We need the network to be up and functional, especially in disastrous times. It’s still appropriate to maintain the existing system. What do you think?

By: CellPlaza

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