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The Woodside Town Council has joined the choir of opposition against AT&T’s application to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to leave its obligation as a “carrier of last resort,” which would end traditional landline services for all of California. Woodsiders told the council how they would be largely be affected by the lack of landline services because of spotty cellphone service in town.
During a March 12 meeting, the council voted 6-0 to approve a letter opposing AT&T’s move.
Before the vote, AT&T representative, Brandon Baranco asked the council to postpone the approval of the letter and invited the council to meet with AT&T to answer its questions. He also shared reasons why the company is pursuing relief as a carrier of last resort.
“Removing the carrier of last resort designation is the first step to create a plan to truly transition the remaining copper customers to a modern technology,” said Baranco. “The fact is a copper network will fail, not if but when. Simply put, the parts needed to repair the copper network are no longer being made.”
AT&T has invested $8.6 billion from 2020 to 2022 and every year $1 billion are spent to maintain the copper network used by less than 1 million people in California, he said.
Resident experiences with cell service
Kings Mountain resident Bree-Anna Vail claims that she has difficulty using her cellphone for her regular everyday needs.
“If you want to come to my house and build me a smoke signal set, I’ll use that, but at this point copper wire is what we need in an emergency,” said Vail. “I need to have that landline so that I know at least I have one way to reach out.”
Resident David Mittleman said that upon asking AT&T for landline services at his residence in the mountains, he was told that the service was unavailable.
“The fiber repeaters require power and so the reason why [copper] technology is such a lifeline is it’s the only thing that works in a power outage,” said Mittleman. “We still use many old technologies today. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s bad. Copper landlines need to stay.”
Council vote, County Board of Supervisors vote
Woodside’s town council voted unanimously to approve the letter to the CPUC opposing AT&T’s application.
Council member Chris Shaw told the AT&T representative: “To convince us that we need to transition to better and more reliable technology, when we’ve been fighting with AT&T to try and get high speed internet to parts of the town is really disingenuous.”
Council member Ned Fluet recalls that five years ago the town was unsuccessful in receiving help when asking AT&T and Comcast to provide internet to Old La Honda Road, which has no reliable internet.
“The idea that all of a sudden they’re not going to provide us with excellent service, I am very doubtful of that because I saw firsthand that we could not even get internet for some of our Woodside residents,” said Fluet.
The idea that all of a sudden they’re not going to provide us with excellent service, I am very doubtful of that because I saw firsthand that we could not even get internet for some of our Woodside residents.
Woodside Council member Ned Fluet
The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 on March 12 to direct the County Attorney’s office to draft a resolution opposing AT&T’s proposal to end landline services, following a request from District 3 County Supervisor Ray Mueller.
CPUC online forum is Tuesday
The CPUC will be holding a virtual public forum on Tuesday, March 19, from 2-6 p.m. for AT&T customers to provide input on the company’s proposal to leave it’s obligation as a carrier of last resort.
