Residents of northern Mississippi are being surveyed on cellphone...
Residents of northern Mississippi are being surveyed on cellphone access, to help persuade carriers to improve service in that part of the state. Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, who represents the region, began a Zap the Gap campaign to…
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pinpoint places where wireless access doesn’t match demand, he said. He isn’t trying to impugn the performance of carriers, he told us. “We just need more input. With the kind of Universal Service Fund money that the companies are getting, you should be able to get a good cell phone signal and not have dropped calls anywhere in Mississippi. The question is, why isn’t service better? Until now we've had to rely totally on the companies to monitor access and service quality, and they're not always right. But consumers know where the problems are, and we hope that by collecting that information and informing the companies we can get them to fix the situation.” He said carriers providing cellphone service in Mississippi have received more than $512 million since 2004 in federal USF payments. Presley said the money is supposed to go toward increasing rural deployment of cellphone services. “Yet we still have many places in the state, especially rural areas of North Mississippi, that don’t have service,” he said. “In today’s world, having reliable, dependable cellphone coverage is an important factor in the safety and quality of life.” The survey is at www.psc.state.ms.us/commissioners/northern/zapthegap.html. Presley said he’s talking up the survey in personal appearances and may produce public service announcements about it.