Verizon Threatens To Disconnect NJ Landline Customer Unless They Switch To Fiber
Consumerist
Verizon Threatens To Disconnect NJ Landline Customer Unless They Switch To Fiber
Copper wire is expensive and old-fashioned. Phone companies don’t want to maintain or use it anymore. Still, some customers like their reliable old land-lines, and the law creates certain obligations for phone companies to provide and maintain them. But Verizon is apparently so sick and tired of providing plain old telephone service that they’re threatening to disconnect customers who don’t “voluntarily” upgrade to fiber A.S.A.P.
Local media outlet NJ TV News is reporting that a resident in northern New Jersey is receiving disconnection threats from Verizon. It’s not that she hasn’t paid her bills; it’s that Verizon just isn’t interested in providing her phone service anymore — unless she lets them come run fiber to her house.
The customer received a letter dated May 15 saying that “services will be suspended on or after 45 days from the date of this letter, if you do not allow Verizon reasonable access to your premises … to move your service to our fiber-optic network.”
“Once your service is suspended,” it continued, “you will only be able to call 9-1-1 and our customer service number … 14 days after being suspended, Verizon service at your address will be disconnected.”
The customer contacted the NJ Division of Rate Counsel, a state-level agency that represents consumer interests in dealing with utility companies (including cable and telecom services). The division has filed a petition with New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities, asking the Board to investigate the letter.
The director of the Division, Stefanie Brand, told NJTV News she thought the letter was “pretty heavy-handed,” and added, “We were shocked. We thought this was clearly a violation of a bunch of state statutes and certainly Verizon’s obligation to be the provider of last resort.”
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When the telecommunications companies were regulated monopolies they were required to give service no matter where in their serving area. There were other regulations that protected the subscribers. Now it is just a free for all with them gouging the customers in new and innovative ways.
I'm confident that Christie's New Jersey Board of Public Utilities will right this terrible wrong. 
They didn't grease all those palms in the FCC and the various state public utility commissions to let the little guy get one over on them. The telcos have their lawyers prepare the laws for the people who are supposed to oversee them. And the way the process works ... the telcos see something that needs to be changed in their favor, they have their whiz kids write up the new laws and they hand them in for the governing bodies to rubber stamp them. BINGO. It's a new law.
We don't care about your silly little problems.
We don't have to. We are the telephone company.
