After Sandy, Verizon Still Faces a Storm in New Jersey
In the continued fallout from Superstorm Sandy (CD Nov 16/12 p1), a bill moving through New Jersey’s Assembly would restrict companies’ ability to retire copper phone lines. The measure represents continued fears that companies, particularly Verizon, plan to do away with copper lines statewide and replace that service with Voice Link, as the company did in the seaside borough of Mantoloking, said Democratic Assemblyman Daniel Benson, sponsor of AB-2459 (http://bit.ly/1oLtQU3). The measure is bringing such strong protests from Verizon that Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula, Democratic chairman of the Assembly Telecommunications and Utilities Committee, called a 15-minute speech by a Verizon lobbyist against the proposal among the most impassioned the committee had ever heard.
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The bill, which passed the committee unanimously despite Verizon’s protests, reflects a contrast between New Jersey and New York’s experience after Sandy, Benson said. Verizon, under public pressure, reversed course in New York and replaced Fire Island’s copper service with fiber cable, instead of Voice Link (CD Sept 11 p3). Mantoloking remains served by Voice Link, Benson said. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has not taken up a request by AARP’s state chapter and other groups to investigate the ramifications of shifting customers from copper, which prompted the bill, said Benson. The measure would bar LECs, including Verizon, from moving customers from copper for a year unless it’s requested, unsolicited, by a consumer. It would require the BPU to study the ramifications of replacing copper, including whether companies are properly maintaining the copper lines or allowing them to deteriorate to push customers to other technologies.
A similar bill to create a yearlong moratorium on retiring copper was put on hold in New York after Verizon shifted its plans, said a spokeswoman for AB-7635 (http://bit.ly/1nF6oKE) sponsor Democratic Assemblyman James Brennan. Verizon on May 7 filed a request with the FCC to retire copper in the seaside community of Belle Harbor in Queens. The move to fiber would affect fewer than 90 people, a Verizon spokesman said Tuesday. AARP had no immediate response to the petition.
The New Jersey bill is being debated amid concerns nationally over the transition away from copper. Public Knowledge and other groups filed an FCC petition (http://bit.ly/1g3VVpH) Monday, urging a commission investigation to concerns copper lines aren’t being maintained, and customers being pushed to wireless projects (CD May 13 p8). Verizon also faces complaints before the regulatory commissions in California and Washington, D.C., and fended off a bill similar to New Jersey’s earlier this year in Maryland (CD March 27 p10). The New Jersey bill also comes after another controversy in the technological transitions going on in the state, an April 23 BPU ruling allowing Verizon to fulfill a requirement to provide Internet across the state through wireless instead of fiber as advocates wanted (CD April 25 p20).
The New Jersey and New York measures are “anti-consumer bills” that would “take choice away from our customers, place an unfair burden on our company and will have a chilling effect on our ability to deploy new technologies and provide upgraded services that best meet the future communication needs of our customers,” Verizon said in a statement Tuesday. In the 15-minute testimony, five times as long as the three-minute limit on speakers, and one in which thumping could be heard on an audio recording of the meeting as she accentuated her points, Leecia Eve, Verizon vice president-state government affairs for the New Jersey, New York and Connecticut region, told the committee Verizon was being attacked with “falsehoods.” The company had invested $4 billion in wireline infrastracture -- “billion with a ‘b,'” she emphasized. The bill, pertaining only to LECs, singled out Verizon, she said. Non-LEC producers of other wireless voice products would be free to solicit and sign up customers, she said. To top it off, the company was being targeted despite being headquartered in Basking Ridge, she said. “Our nationally based operation could be based anywhere. ... We chose New Jersey as our home.”
Consumers are dropping landlines for wireless, and the bill “deprives our present, and future customers choices in meeting their communications needs” Eve said. New Jersey Business & Industry Association Vice President-Environment, Energy & Federal Affairs Sara Bluhm warned a moratorium would be a “red flag” discouraging innovative companies from coming to the state. Concerns wireless technologies don’t work with home security alarms or medical alerts would be worked out through the IP trials, said AT&T New Jersey Vice President-External Affairs Charlene Brown.
"We're not trying to stop business progress or the technological transition to the future,” Benson said in an interview. “It’s about not losing nearly 80 years of ideals and values like universal service and accessibility.” He questions whether copper lines are being maintained. When customers complain about deteriorating copper service, “you're transferred to another call center and the first thing they do is try to sign you up for Voice Link,” he said. “We need to prevent companies from unilaterally abandoning copper and forcing customers to accept an inferior product,” said, referring to Voice Link. “Customers are being harmed now, which is why a moratorium is so important, to make sure no additional customers are harmed,” AARP New Jersey Associate State Director for Advocacy Evelyn Liebman told the committee.