Dear Editor,
I want to raise a serious problem that isn’t getting the attention it deserves: phone companies abandoning landlines and their failure to warn you that your landline will be lost when you change your service level.
We have no cellphone coverage where we are. When my husband opted to upgrade to a higher-speed internet account, I only discovered that our landline was cut afterward, when the phone didn’t work. It was not because of a power outage: It was a failure in the internet relay for the local area, something I had no way of knowing about because I couldn’t call the phone company to ask why the phone wasn’t working. This happened the day after the upgrade.
Then I discovered that the panel that monitors for freezing, fire or break-ins, which worked on the landline copper wire, had to be rewired for internet connection, at a cost of $600. We also had to purchase a battery backup. Without it, a power outage would knock out our router relay box and with it our phone service.
I felt quite endangered when I was cut off that day, not knowing what had caused it, and then furious when I learned that our landline had been cut. I called our internet supplier and other phone companies to try to get it restored — nothing doing, not even for a fee.
The landline worked when we were cut off by a blizzard in 2010 for four days, at a time when even the roads weren’t being plowed, a major emergency. I was taking care of my dying mother, and, though physically unreachable, we were never out of touch with the hospice workers by phone. I couldn’t walk to a house with a generator — the snow was too deep, and I couldn’t leave my mother. But we weren’t cut off.
When I learned that the “upgrading” had cut off my landline, a day of considerable anxiety followed. I couldn’t contact anyone and thought about what would happen if, alone at the house, I had an accident or emergency. Emergency buttons, pendants, watches and so on only work via the internet if you have no landline.
The phone company had no obligation to warn us when we opted to upgrade, and it didn’t. The company has no obligation to maintain or restore the copper-wire phone lines. California has made such maintenance mandatory in rural locations where cellphone reception and electricity cannot be relied on. Vermont should do likewise.
Anna Shapiro
Cavendish, Vt.
