CenturyLink customer says phone company won’t fix his landline as carriers nationally push to unplug landline service

HUNTSVILLE — James Quast says he’s been having serious trouble with his CenturyLink landline service.

“Our telephone has been out for going on the two weeks now,” he said.

You might think, landline — what’s the big deal? Well, in rural Huntsville, Quast says it’s a very big deal as cell phone reception is spotty at best.

“Depending on where I am in the house… I have no cell phone service and there’s no (landline) phone,” he said. “If you call our phone right now, what you’ll get is a busy signal.”

Quast says his landline service goes out a lot. Now two weeks into this outage, he says CenturyLink only tells him to wait. With his patience worn out, he decided it was time to contact the KSL Investigators.

The end of landlines?

His trouble comes as carriers across the country are moving to eliminate landlines. It’s a move that in many cases goes against what’s called Carrier of Last Resort. That’s a nearly century-old doctrine requiring phone companies to provide basic service to any potential customer in their service area.

Some carriers are now petitioning states to cancel their Carrier of Last Resort obligation, arguing it’s too costly to maintain the aging landline infrastructure. Plus, they point to modern options like fiber and wireless broadband networks. However, consumer advocates argue that will cause an unfair burden on people who either don’t want to use a cell phone or can’t afford one. It’s also a hardship, they say, to folks in rural areas without good cell service – i.e. James Quast.

“We’re out in the boonies and they don’t want to spend money here,” he said.

CenturyLink wants out as Utah’s ‘Carrier of Last Resort’

And, indeed, our investigation found CenturyLink is one of the carriers wanting out of its Carrier of Last Resort obligation. The company sent a petition to that effect to Utah’s Public Service Commission. Last March, the Public Service Commission said no – for now.

So, we reached out to the public relations people at Lumen, who owns the CenturyLink brand, and asked if there’s hesitation to fix Quast’s landline because of its bid to shed its Carrier of Last Resort status. A spokesperson insists the answer is no.

“The outage was due to a cable cut in the area,” he wrote, and they “worked to speed up the repair process and restored services.” He also said, “Repair and maintenance activities for our existing customers are not affected by the presence of a Carrier of Last Resort obligation.”

Reconnected

“What I’d really like to have happen is for my telephone to work,” said Quast.

He got his wish. Two days after we contacted Lumen, his landline finally got fixed.

Lumen says this repair to James’ phone line is designed to be permanent.