Voice Link continues to create concern and questions. ...

copper alternative, in the Catskills, citing union reports and a resident’s affidavit, and called for a halt to the telco’s “illegal” behavior (CD June 27 p6). He alleged Verizon was violating a May PSC order giving Verizon conditional approval for deploying Voice Link on Fire Island, which prompted the telco to argue the approval didn’t cover cases of optional transition to Voice Link. Communications Workers of America observed other Voice Link New York deployments, District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton told the PSC in a Wednesday letter. He described Verizon’s May efforts to offer Voice Link as “replacement service to all 81 units of a building” in lower Manhattan where “elderly residents” refused after “learning that it would not support their LifeAlert health monitoring equipment,” he wrote (http://bit.ly/10nVb4x). “To CWA’s knowledge, the building remains without phone service at the present time. There have also been a limited number of installations in the Hudson Valley area to customers who were not aware of the limitations of VoiceLink service.” Shelton described installations on a “limited basis” in Brooklyn and Queens. “This is exactly the kind of very important but nit-picky and highly localized question you want handled at the state level,” Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld wrote in a long post on his Tales of the Sausage Factory blog Thursday (http://bit.ly/14zIYtj). “Happily for New York, the NY PSC has not become one of the many states that have joined the Chump Parade and totally deregulated their phone system. If New York eliminated its COLR [carrier of last resort] regulations, as a bunch of other states have done, then Verizon would not need to provide service at all. You would take Voice Link and be grateful for it -- peasant.” Phillip Dampier, a Voice Link critic responsible for the Stop the Cap! telecom blog, issued a “call to action” to his readers: “We strongly urge our fellow New Yorkers to share their personal views about Voice Link as a landline substitute with the PSC,” he wrote in a Thursday post (http://bit.ly/1232kUm), pointing to the PSC comments deadline on Voice Link next Tuesday. On Wednesday, PSC staff also sent Verizon their questions about the service, looking at operations from May through this coming October. It asked the telco for information about dropped calls, 911 call completion and other information (http://bit.ly/17FLbcr). The New York Legislature is considering Assembly Bill 7635, which proposes “a moratorium” regarding “the replacement of landline telephone service with a wireless system” (http://bit.ly/126MTvu). The bill was introduced in late May, passed the Assembly and is now in the New York Senate rules committee.