Last summer, Senator Kevin Ranker’s office contacted Lance Evans, Executive Director of the Orcas Chamber of Commerce, asking if island businesses suffered any negative impacts due to the CenturyLink outages, particularly over the July 4th holiday. Last week, Ranker communicated his discussions with Century Link to Evans. Ranker’s letter follows.
October 7, 2013
Dear Lance,
Over the July 4th weekend, many San Juan County residents experienced repeated internet outages and disruptions, as was described in detail by many who shared their frustration with me through letters, phone calls and emails. CenturyLink provides internet service to the islands, and the outage over the July 4th weekend is not the first of such disruptions.
Recently I met with CenturyLink’s senior official for the Pacific Northwest region, Brian Stading, as well as two other CenturyLink officers, Mark Reynolds and Tom Walker, to find out what CenturyLink is doing to prevent future interruptions. I explained to them that the outage was not only an enormous inconvenience to thousands of island residents reliant on the internet, it was also costly for the many businesses on the island that depend upon reliable internet communications with their customers and clients. I told CenturyLink’s representatives they need to work to ensure that it will not happen again.
I also wanted to know what CenturyLink is doing to expand broadband to the Islands after publicly stating that they would continue to serve our community and would not need the larger OPALCO proposal that had been proposed.
They told me CenturyLink is expanding the capacity of a broadband fiber ring that runs through Orcas, San Juan, and Lopez Islands. For unknown reasons, over the July 4th weekend a fiber connection came loose at a location not connected with the expansion. This is an important point because the typical cause of an outage is a cut fiber from a backhoe. But in this case there were no obvious signs of any construction mishaps, so workers had to work their way along various points of the ring throughout the islands checking for connectivity.
Brian said, “ It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.” Compounding the problem was the holiday weekend, which meant workers who handle this specialized work had to be located and sent to the Islands. Once the loose connection was found it was repaired immediately. They assured me that CenturyLink is inspecting all similar connections to avoid any future surprises.
Brian told me CenturyLink is now upgrading its fiber system to accommodate the expansion of wireless companies in the area. It is also aggressively expanding capacity at various distribution points along the fiber ring. A possible partnering with OPALCO would speed up this effort, but CenturyLink had no plans to expand into rural areas where OPALCO expansion is planned. While CenturyLink will continue to upgrade their system, my understanding is that they will not significantly expand their coverage area beyond urban growth areas.
I reiterated with CenturyLink’s management that the company must make a strong commitment to maintaining reliable internet infrastructure in the Islands, and that they must be open and transparent with their customers about the outages and what is being done to eliminate them. I left the meeting confident my messages were received. Now it’s up to CenturyLink to move forward with their promises.
Sincerely,
Kevin Ranker,
Washington State Senate, 40th Legislative District
Trust me that is not the only outages or negative affects on computer use. My modem crashed leaving me without computer for over 5 days. It was finally resolved by the second local CenturyTel person who worked for over an hour here at our home.
We gave up using Roku due to continual blackouts on the system due to low signal strength of 1.5.
This is totally unacceptable and prompt action needs to be taken.
When the lights go out Opalco is here to fix the problem. There is a number I can call to find out how long it will be dark and what is wrong. I call Century Link, get a person in Louisiana and then I wait. The phone is fixed soon but meanwhile I am in the “dark” about how long and what’s up. Forget a response over the weekend.
That’s why I support Opalco broadband.
Lance & Kevin: You see that our biggest problem with Centurylink is COMMUNICATION; rather strange, don’t you think, for a communication company to have that problem??!
Give us direct phone or internet access to the local fix-it people. That simple adjustment will help a lot.
Two months ago I lost the monthly coin toss between me and my partner – I would have to call CenturyLink about the problem this time. After years of being put on hold, treated rudely, then put on hold again, made to re-test everything and put on hold again, neither of us can stomach dealing with CenturyLink. We have for years been paying for 10 times the internet speed we often get.
Well, this time I got a real gem. Not only was she sweet and helpful, she promised me a free upgrade to faster service and a lower price. Wow. Of course, this was just before CenturyLink’s hearing before the state’s UTC asking to no longer be regulated.
Funny thing. The UTC hearing has come and gone. My internet still has problems and my bill has not changed.
The only thing that’s changed? This time my partner insists there will be no coin toss. I was stupid enough to fall for the pretty lies, so I will be the one to make tomorrow’s call.
– And as with Ms. Henry, I have never had any such problems with OPALCO. They are local, they are a co-op and they have always been prompt and responsive for us. Let us hope they do not choose to invest our money in infrastructure only to give it away to CenturyLink.
If our public utilities commission was not a wholly owned subsidiary of the utilities it is SUPPOSED to be regulating, this wouldn’t be a problem. Century Link would be out of business. Communications are what is referred to as ‘natural monopolies’. It doesn’t make sense to have multiple parallel wires or fiber optics running down our roads any more than we have multiple electrical services. That means that the service providers either have to be regulated closely (Hah!) or be run by the public, i.e., a cooperative. Get it? OPALCO must be our communications provider. Anything else is a joke and a ripoff.
I was very disappointed by the lack of support for Opalco’s broadband service as it would have gone a long way to providing reliable internet service in the islands. It is apparent we are not a big enough market for CenturyLink to put any large investment into upgrading their system here.
ond everything said above about the nightmare of dealing with CenturyLink. And it is not related to a one-time fiber disconnect. I’ve been told that our long-term abysmal telephone service (so much noise we can hardly conduct a conversation) and terrible DSL (.2 MB now seems to be the standard) are the result of old or unshielded telephone and electric lines and the failure of Century Link to invest in new infrastructure here because our market is so small. We were told that recent work in Victorian Valley would fix the problem. It did not.
If CenturyLink thinks our market too small to take seriously, it should leave and let our local entrepreneurs handle it.
I am writing to the public utilities commission, and ask that Sen. Ranker look further into this issue. There is no way we get clean, low-impact businesses here without decent telecommunications.
I meant “I second . . .”
And having one telephone number for a local contact would be a godsend for CenturyLink customers. The company’s motto seems to be put on hold, transfer, and transfer again until the caller has to hang up to attend to kids or make dinner or do work.