NY PSC: Verizon Lagging On DSL/Landline Repairs > No surprise...

No surprise...

A friend of mine has had issues with their phone lines going down as well. Seems like once in a while, their phone line will go down for days on end and they have to rely on cellular phone service which is 1 bar EDGE at best. They've called Verizon out several times within the past year or two about this issue. Verizon has stated though that they should have never been connected out as far as they were from the remote (several miles of wire, no load coils), and were really on some sort of "extension" system. The problem, despite it taking Verizon days to fix it has always been at a small junction box connecting the aerial cable from the poles down the road to the underground copper drops that they and their neighbors rely on. Their phone line has been much better since Verizon said to them that they believe they've fixed the issue with their line as well as the others on the street seeing the same issue.

Now, in this case, every Verizon line on the street connected through the small junction box (really a pedestal) would have a dead silent line and calling a line coming from that pedestal would result in a busy signal. No signs would show up with the phone service going out such as static or bad audio. It would just go out without warning. Ironically though, my friend also has the option of another telephone company, Frontier who has an aerial copper drop running past their home. People across the street as well as next door to them have Frontier service if they didn't choose Verizon.

In the past though, Verizon has always been quick about getting things online. At the Verizon location, we've only had two outages. The first "outage" prevented us from receiving calls but allowed us to make outgoing. This meant that our Answering machine or for that matter, no one ever answered and on the other end of the call, the call appeared to be answered. I have two Verizon field techs in my area. I let them know about my phone trouble at 6PM at night, and they fixed it first thing the next morning for us (bad line card). Now, three years later Buffalo is hit with the October Storm and we lose our phone line a day after the storm hit. Despite other parts of the area having much worse damage to the system than my area did, our line was back online within 12 hours along with DSL.

I don't know how Verizon is now since I haven't needed them for anything in over a year, but I wouldn't doubt they're abandoning the copper network. I'm lucky to have new copper (I suppose) out where I am. Should hold up for a while.
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Cheap bastards put you on DLCs.