Communications Workers of America filed a complaint against CenturyLink in April 2020. Last week the MN Public Utilities Commission (PUC) hosted a meeting to get public comments on CenturyLink’s service. The PUC wants to provide a forum for comment before the evidentiary hearing to be held later this year. More comments are welcome in a future meeting or in writing before Aug 31. (On July 24 there’s another online hearing.)
Organizational hosts welcomed everyone with brief comments:
- The Attorney General is there to address the issue.
- CWA read a list of their complaints rooted in reduced staff in the field. They note that CenturyLink has turned its focus to fiber instead of maintaining copper in the field.
- CenturyLink tries to provide good service. We can have a representative contact commenters later to help fix problems if that’s OK with commenters. (Also slide of info.)
- PUC Analyst talks about how things are going to happen and goals of the meeting
(You can also access the slide on the MN PUC site.)
Then Public Comments and Questions:
I took very high level notes; the PUC will release more complete notes with the final report.
Dave J – Just north of Stillwater, I am unable to reach a live voice when issues arise after hours. When I can reach someone, they aren’t helpful. My broadband speed is 20/2 Mbps. There’s no other provider in the area. Cell coverage for broadband doe not work.
Ken M – From Richfield, been a customer for 73 years. There’s been a great deterioration of service. It takes 15 minutes to reach customer support and help is rarely local The local folks are good when I reach them. I was forced to get fiber during the pandemic because CL refused to maintain copper in the area. Fiber is supposed to be faster and clearer but it’s not as fast as I hoped – just marginally faster than DSL. Phone service is not clear. We’ve spent $65,000 over 73 years. Because my phone is now on fiber, it turns out when the power goes out, so does my phone. That didn’t happen with copper.
Warren K – same issues as previous commenters, living 18 miles south of Hutchinson. When the road was rebuilt, the line was “temporarily moved” outside of the conduit and was never moved back in. The quality is bad -and now it’s been abandoned since Nov 2022. Their repair people can’t talk to billing. We have the names of folks we talk to – and then it falls apart and then they just dropped our account. It’s causing us to not be able to use our computers when we should. We are getting “telegraphing” which is causing staticky and dropped calls. There are only two accounts on this line. We had to get a cell phone to reach CL.
Rowan W – MIS Director for Cook County – we have been working for years to get better service for our residents. We think of it as a pubic safety issue. The sheriff’s office gets reports of outages that impact 911 calls. For just less than 6 months last year we had wide spread outages. I talked to one residents who was without service for 20 days. We talk to them and they acknowledge failure.
Mary D – We get humming on our phone line in Stillwater. We had an appointment scheduled for Jul 11 – but no one showed up until Jul 19. It happens at least every 3 months. The techs tell us that the lines are terrible. I can’t depend on the landline. We are three miles outside of Stillwater. We pay $50/month for something we don’t want to use.
Nathan D – my service in Rochester is fine but I had rental property in the TCs with problems with the pedestal. Seems like folks in metro areas are having fewer problems than folks in rural areas. My phone service from CL is good; price is higher than other services but I feel like that might be federal regulation. Phone company should be a public utility.
Terry H – from St Paul, we have terrible cell and landline service. We are long term customers. The problem is with the phone itself. Every time is rains or the snow melts we get a buzz on the phone that prohibits hearing callers. We live in a hilly area. We do have very good broadband service – but not phone service.