Wireline phone reliabily standards?

[Matt Meiser]

Anyone know of any. My provider is telling me than can only react to frequent outages on one of my lines. Over 8 years I've opened dozens of trouble tickets for weeks of outages or unusable service due to noise. The local manager tells me he knows of no reliability standard nor any requirement to identify lines with unusual outages and target them for improvement.

Coincidentally, the carrier in question announced in their financial results a couple weeks ago that they lost 10% of their subscribers year over year. Can't imagine why.

[Scott T Smith]

Matt, I'm a retired E&O VP from a wireless carrier. You're doing the right thing by opening up the trouble tickets. There are not any national or federal standards; however you do have options depending upon the cause of your problem.

If you happen to live in an area with weak or overlapping coverage, there may not be much that can be done.

If you'll send me an e-mail we can discuss your problems in greater depth.

Regards,

Scott

[Brian Elfert]

Since this a wired phone you should be able to contact the Public Utilities Commission or similar in your state to make a formal complaint. Back in the days of running an ISP with many dial-up lines I had to threaten to call the PUC a great many times. I can't recall if I ever did so or not. They didn't want to deal with the PUC so they fixed the problem instead.

[Joel Goodman]

Oh for the days of Ma Bell! And I'm not kidding.

[Matt Meiser]

Scott, this is a traditional landline. Our Verizon cell service is rock solid with great coverage from a tower that's less than 12,000 feet from our house.

[Paul Saffold]

My only problem with land lines was caused by squirrels chewing the insulation off of the wires. The wires were replaced 3 times in 17 years. This was back in northern NY when I had dialup internet. I couldn't get internet if it was rainy or foggy till the wires were replaced. I've never cared much for the grey rodents, unless they were in a stew.

[Gary Max]

"contact the Public Utilities Commission"----- you need to have facts and dates. Plan this out and you will be surprized at your results.

[Phil Thien]

I've had good luck with this:

http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm

I once had to file twice on the same issue, because a representative from that carrier, acting on my complaint, told me to pound sand.

I got the bozo's contact information, filed a 2nd complaint detailing what I had been told, and by the next day the carrier couldn't move fast enough to fix my problem. They literally had two crews at the site when I arrived, and a guy at the wire center, and had the problem fixed about ten minutes later.

[Scott T Smith]

I've had good luck with this:

http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm

I once had to file twice on the same issue, because a representative from that carrier, acting on my complaint, told me to pound sand.

I got the bozo's contact information, filed a 2nd complaint detailing what I had been told, and by the next day the carrier couldn't move fast enough to fix my problem. They literally had two crews at the site when I arrived, and a guy at the wire center, and had the problem fixed about ten minutes later.



"contact the Public Utilities Commission"----- you need to have facts and dates. Plan this out and you will be surprized at your results.


These are your two best approaches. You will need to document the fact that it has been a repeat problem, with dates/times. Send a certified letter to the Investor Relations Department of your Telco with a copy of your complaint too. Call the telco (or otherwise research) to find out the address for IR.

[Brian Elfert]

Your wireline carrier may have something like an executive customer relations office to deal with problems like yours. I know Qwest has/had such an office that I was real familiar with.

My problems as an ISP were mostly with getting new service installed. I was ordering phone lines 20 or 30 at a time. I was in an office building with three ISPs total in the same building and the three of us probably had 1,000 phone lines between us. Qwest had to run a huge 900 pair cable to the building. Qwest also ended up running fiber direct to the building when ISPs went digital. The reason for all the complaints was because Qwest dragged their feet for months getting this stuff installed.

[John Shuk]

http://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/0,4639,7-159-16372-47271--,00.html

There should be some sort of Presidential complaint line as well.

[Matt Meiser]

Looks like the section on quality standards was repealed. I'm no lawyer, but there's another document there that seems to talk about them being required to maintain a quality standard approved by the MPSC. Interesting that this gentleman says he knows of no standard if that's the case. I'd think they could be in trouble even for telling me that if that's the case. I think I'll contact the MPSC next week and ask some questions.