Dozens of Navajo and Apache County residents expressed their frustrations and concerns to Frontier Communications on Thursday after a phone and internet service outage last month cut the community from online commerce and 911 emergency services for nearly two days. expressed.
The state utility regulator held a town hall meeting at St. John’s High School to hear the views of residents. Frontier must submit a response to the Arizona Corporation Commission, the body that handles each complaint.
St. Johns resident and business owner Sandra Crabtree said she had a severe asthma attack during a power outage when her car keys were locked in her office.
“Talk about panic,” said Crabtree. “I couldn’t get into the office, I couldn’t call any of the girls who had the keys to the office, I couldn’t call my daughter who lived across town, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t call 911, couldn’t call my neighbors, and was completely panicked, to say the least.”
Teresa Trujillo, who lives in rural Apache County, like many in northern Arizona, echoed this sense of panic when services ended and she lives in a remote area. Trujillo ended up driving more than 30 miles from his home to find services during the blackout.
“Losing cell or phone service for an extended period of time when your closest neighbors are out of your sight can be very scary,” she said.
Residents addressed three members of the Arizona Business Commission and Frontier representatives in the crowd. Neither the Commissioner nor Frontier were able to answer questions publicly at the Town Hall due to legal restrictions.
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The commission’s legal team said, “In accordance with Arizona’s public assembly law, the City Hall assembly notice did not indicate that Frontier would give a speech or answer questions from the public in attendance. “It would have been against the law to allow them to speak and answer questions because they were not noticed speaking.”
Instead, the commission ordered the company to specifically address all complaints raised by residents in formal filings with the ACC.
Still, Frontier representatives spoke individually with the public at the end of the night so they could address their questions and concerns one-on-one.
Frontier was not immediately available for comment in time for publication.
City Hall was organized after a severe phone and internet service outage that affected a wide variety of residents, businesses and emergency services in northern Arizona for approximately 48 hours from June 11-13. The outage was caused by his two shotgun blasts at two different locations on him within the Frontier’s fiber cable. infrastructure. The Navajo County Sheriff’s Office is investigating who fired these gunshots.
At a public hearing last week, the commission instructed Frontier to report its response to the outage on an hourly basis. This filing traces the actions of a Frontier employee as he worked around the clock to find the cause of the outage and fix it.
At City Hall, John Ingram, manager of the Apache County Sheriff’s Office’s public service response point or public call center, said he was in constant communication with crew members working to repair power outages on site and nearby. Elaborating Frontier’s response from his side. Hourly updates from the company.
However, this timeline also highlighted some of the unique challenges associated with operating and maintaining fiber cables in remote desert areas. This includes travel times between locations and limitations due to terrain.
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Companies often bury fiber cables to prevent similar acts of vandalism, but are particularly vulnerable to such incidents because the natural environment of the area prevents some of the cables from being buried.
Throughout the night, public safety officials, business owners, and residents shared their experiences of losing phone and Internet service during power outages. In addition to the obvious public safety issues these incidents have posed, many residents are concerned about the potential to discourage new people and businesses from coming to new people and businesses, as well as impacting current residents. has expressed concern about the pattern of periodic outages and service slowdowns. community, they said.
Much of the conversation also involved ensuring fiber line redundancy. This means that if one section fails, you have a backup to ensure your service remains intact. But the question remains: Who is responsible for ensuring that redundancy?
Springerville resident Roger Roethlisberger wants to press charges that “not only Frontier has been hit hard tonight, but AT&T and Verizon are to blame.” “They sell us services that rely on Frontier, but if they don’t have the service, Frontier gets blamed.”
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Frontier owns a physical fiber infrastructure that spans vast swaths of the state, but Verizon and other carriers lease the technology to serve thousands of customers. However, it is unclear to what extent these carriers are responsible for taking steps to ensure redundancy for their customers in the event of this type of service outage.
Frontier is also seeking grants for these redundancies projects as part of the nationwide Middle Mile Project, a company spokesperson said. The project will provide $1 billion in funding to provide high-speed broadband to communities in need across the country.
In February, the Arizona Department of Commerce announced Broadband Statewide Middle Mile Strategic Plan to address these issues. The ACA reports that 31% of Arizona households are underserved or have no internet service at all. The report provided recommendations for achieving widespread broadband access statewide, including installing broadband networks along interstate corridors and highways. This brings technology within miles of currently underserved residents.
Representatives from the offices of Rep. Tom O’Halleran and Sen. Mark Kelly were also present at City Hall and said they were listening to voter feedback and were watching the issue closely.
Frontier plans to submit a response to the public comments to the ACC within about 10 days, a spokesperson said.
Contact reporter Lacey Latch in Northern Arizona. llatch@gannett.com or on social media @laceylatchNorthern Arizona coverage on azcentral.com and the Republic of Arizona is funded by a grant from the non-profit Report for America and the Vitalyst Health Foundation Associated with the Republic of Arizona.
