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Company Spokesman: Morris Area

Telephone Failures Not Systemic

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

MORRIS – As of day’s end yesterday, Frontier Communications customers along Route 51 in Otsego County were “not experiencing any outages,” state Public Service Commission spokesman James Denn reported in an e-mail.

However, if outages begin reoccurring, customers should alert Frontier and, “if repair is delayed or if the company is unresponsive,” they can file complaints with the PSC at 800-342-3377.

“Over the last few weeks,” Denn said, he discovered there have been “intermittent service outages affecting certain customers in and around the Morris area.”

The PSC spokesman was reacting to news that Otsego County’s 911 director, Rob O’Brien, had filed a complaint yesterday with the commission after Frontier had reported that outages emanating from the Bourne Hill Road substation had been fixed Wednesday, and then they began again on Thursday.

Nonetheless, Frontier spokesman Emily Tantare reported yesterday that she was told repairs were completed by 10:15 a.m. Tuesday, which would be contrary to complaints O’Brien received the following day.

“This situation was not an interruption of the 911 system,” Tantare said, “but rather involved individual customers whose telephone service was interrupted a few days on separate occasions, not continually.”

She reported two situations:

• One, on Dec. 20, a phone-service interruption was reported, and temporarily repaired remotely. Crews were dispatched Dec. 24 to “implement a permanent fix.”
• then, on Dec. 30 there was a “subsequent interruption,” and crew were dispatched three days later, Jan 2, and completed repair by 10:15 a.m.