Verizon Voice Link Service Leads to More Questions than Answers for Fire Island Residents
Extending the New York Public Service Commission’s comment period on Verizon’s request to serve Fire Island, N.Y., solely with its fixed wireless product from July 2 to Sept. 13 helped the commission receive more than 1,000 public comments from state legislators, town governments and local fire departments. Meanwhile, Verizon agreed Sept. 10 to install fiber on Fire Island (CD Sept 11 p3), but many industry observers and state regulators said the telco’s decision does not extend to areas of New Jersey also affected by Hurricane Sandy (CD Sept 12 p3). The commission is now asking for comments by Sept. 30 on Verizon’s tariff amendment filing to withdraw a provision to use Voice Link as the sole service on Fire Island (CD Sept 16 p18) .
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Verizon’s tariff amendments to shut down the wireline system “violate the law, regulations and sound public policy,” said Common Cause New York, Communications Workers of America, Consumers Union and the Fire Island Association in joint comments (http://bit.ly/1eHSpjA). The public advocates asked for the commission to make areas of inquiry open for public inspection, including actual costs and expenses associated with repair and maintenance of the wireline system for the past 10 years; projected costs and expenses of rebuilding the wireline system; location of any planned or active offering of Voice Link service and the location of actual installation in New York; all information on intercompany cost allocation, source and amount of any support received as a consequence of Hurricane Sandy; and all marketing and training materials used on Fire Island or elsewhere in New York relating to Voice Link.
The public advocates said the Voice Link service does not provide customer, health and public safety services, including medical alert services, relay services for the hearing impaired, fax machines, credit card processing, calling cards, collect calls or international calls from other carriers. “Verizon has systematically misallocated costs thereby distorting the extent to which the wireline system has suffered losses, if any,” said the public advocates. The commission needs to prove or disprove the “systematic and intentional misallocation” by Verizon because it has “consequences for customers/ratepayers of both systems, the tax payments due to federal, state and local jurisdictions, and policy decisions made by the commission,” said the public advocates.
Verizon should not “get away with their clearly profit-driven attempt" to be released from its obligation to provide reliable and comparable phone service to Fire Island, said the Village of Saltaire in its comments (http://bit.ly/1djvYwP). Saltaire Mayor Robert Cox filed comments based on residents’ experience and feedback regarding Voice Link during the past three months. Voice Link service is bad for businesses because fax machines, credit card processing, call waiting, call forwarding and remote voicemail are not supported by Voice Link, said Cox. Thousands of jobs by “well-trained Verizon technicians” who are CWA members are also threatened in an “obvious attempt to add to Verizon’s bottom line profit,” said Cox. The Voice Link service also threatens public safety during an emergency or power outages because Voice Link requires electricity to work, said Cox. “In the next disaster, we require reliable phone service that is not dependent upon electrical service, not the communications blackout that would happen with Voice Link and would further endanger public safety,” he said.
Many of the comments come from Fire Island residents who submitted a form letter from the AARP New York (http://bit.ly/18pTaEw). The letter says Verizon’s decision to switch from a landline phone service to a wireless service should be the consumer’s choice. The wireless service threatens public safety and it opens the door to eliminating landlines statewide, said AARP. The New York PSC’s approval of the Voice Link service could create a possible incentive for telecom companies to allow their copper networks to deteriorate, and the Voice Link service eliminates a broadband option for consumers on Fire Island, said AARP.
Three state senators commended the PSC for taking action to assess Voice Link’s implications for consumers, communities, competition, public safety and economic development in New York. In their comments (http://bit.ly/18pSUFy), Phil Boyle, Carl Marcellino and Jack Martins said they're co-sponsoring a bill in the state Senate to impose a moratorium pending a broader study on telecommunications companies requiring traditional telephone services move to wireless-only service. “We certainly welcome new technology, but only where such technology represents a step forward for the State of New York and offers improvement relative to the ’traditional’ technology,” said the republican senators. “Until such time as the well-documented adverse consequences for safety, network reliability, and broadband availability are remedied, Verizon should not be allowed to deploy Voice Link.” Assemblyman Kevin Cahill (D) said his western Ulster County district would be sent back to a time before telephones if Voice Link were the only service available because cellphones are “nearly useless because signals don’t reach them” in remote areas (http://bit.ly/169vNxX). (sfriedman@warren-news.com)