BellSouth puts service-delay window at 3 weeks
By Kristi E. Swartz
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 09, 2004
It could be three weeks before some BellSouth customers in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast get back their dial tones.
About 23 percent — or 264,000 — of the local phone giant's customers in Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties do not have phone service, down from almost 30 percent after Hurricane Frances hit the area early Sunday, BellSouth spokeswoman Marta Casas-Celaya said Wednesday.
The three-week window is based on the number of people in line to have service restored, Casas-Celaya said.
"We'll probably repair it before that date, but we don't want to overpromise," she said.
In the meantime, BellSouth is offering call forwarding, voice mail and memory call for free for 30 days to customers without service, and also is waiving connection fees for residents or businesses who had to move because of the storm.
The primary reason for the delay is the widespread power outage caused by Frances, which lasted longer than the backup battery systems in remote terminals — the large, green utility boxes on the side of the road — that route calls.
BellSouth's central offices require electricity to work but have backup generators in case the power goes out.
Another obstacle is getting through the debris around phone terminals.
"In some cases, we don't know what we are physically going to find," Casas-Celaya said.
About 75 percent of BellSouth's lines in Florida are underground, she said.
But the remote terminals, which are critical points, are not.
"The phone lines are above the ground, and that's the problem," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst in Marietta, Ga. "If the phone lines are underground, the problem would be much less."
Still, the major difficulty arose from the character of Frances, a giant, slow-moving storm that affected most of the state's 67 counties.
"This is a storm that happens once in a blue moon, and you have to prepare for storms, but you can't prepare for a storm like this," Kagan said. "It's a very difficult situation for BellSouth to be in."
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