Public Service Commission hears Nebraskans' phone service horror stories

More recently, up until the last year, Gehring said he had occasional outages, but service "was decent."

It's been in the past year, though, that he's experienced a nightmare.

Gehring said he's been without internet or phone service at his home since January. He said Frontier first promised he'd have it back by April or May and then was told he'd have it back by October.

"And I still have nothing," he said.

Gehring said he's spent hours on the phone with Frontier customer service representatives, none of whom have been able to give him a straight answer as to what the problem is.

"I'm kind of at a loss of what to do," he said.

Gehring was one of three people who testified at a public hearing in Omaha on Wednesday about service problems with three of the state's major telecommunications companies. The hearing also was streamed online.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission scheduled the hearing at Metropolitan Community College's South Campus after receiving more than 250 complaints over the past couple of years concerning the state's so-called Price Cap Carriers, which are the large, multistate carriers that receive money from the Nebraska Universal Service Fund.

Frontier is one of those companies. The others are CenturyLink and Windstream.

Two CenturyLink customers testified Wednesday.

One of those customers, Rebecca Fahrlander, said she's been dealing with service outages at her Bellevue home, mostly involving her internet service, over the past eight months.

Fahrlander said she's had about 15 appointments since March with CenturyLink service technicians and three times they didn't even bother to show up.

Those who have shown up have told her many times that she's in an area where the infrastructure is old, which is a big reason for the service outages.

"That's not my problem," Fahrlander said.

She said she was so frustrated that she did some research and found a phone number to contact CenturyLink's CEO, called twice and left detailed messages but got no response.

"That's the only company where I've called the CEO or equivalent and they don't care enough to call back," Fahrlander said.

No Windstream customers spoke about service problems, but one person who wants to be a customer talked about his frustration that the company won't provide him service.

State Sen. Bruce Bostelman, who lives in rural Butler County, said he's asked Windstream for broadband service pretty much since he and his family moved there in 2002. Initially, he said the company told him there were plans to connect his area, but after a couple of years, he said Windstream made it clear they had no plans to provide service in the area.

Bostelman expressed his frustration for what he called the unwillingness of companies "to serve real rural areas outside a town or village," something he said is a widespread problem.

For their part, representatives of the companies said they try to resolve customer problems as quickly as possible but don't always meet those goals.

They also said they are dealing with the same labor issues that other companies are dealing with, making it hard to keep the ranks of service technicians and customer service workers filled.

And then there is the issue of declining interest in landline phone service.

In a filing with the Public Service Commission, CenturyLink noted that the number of landline phone subscribers in Nebraska has declined from more than 1.1 million in 2000 to about 456,000 last year.

Al Lubeck, CenturyLink's public policy director, said the company has lost 10% of its subscriber base in the past year, and has reduced its number of technicians by about the same percentage.

The company also pointed out in its filing that the three companies subject to the hearing make up less than 9% of all communications subscribers in the state, and it noted that "the Commission’s inquiry is extremely narrow in scope and directed at a relatively small number of communications customers."

But PSC District 2 Commissioner Crystal Rhoades said there's a reason that the three companies have been singled out.

Even though they have only 9% of customers, "about 50% of the outages and the lion's share of customer complaints are directly related to the Price Cap Companies," Rhoades said.

Public Service Commission members did not detail any next steps after Wednesday's hearing. District 3 Commissioner Tim Schram, who moderated the hearing, said customers or others have until Nov. 2 to submit comments or complaints.