20120517Comment.pdf

Jean Jewell
From: [e-mail]
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 5:39 AM
To: Jean Jewell; Beverly Barker; Gene Fadness
Subject: PUC Comment Form
A Comment from Mark Steele follows:
Case Number: GNR-T-12-03
Name: Mark Steele
Address: P0 Box 67
City: Soda Springs
State: ID
Zip: 83276
Daytime Telephone: [phone]
Contact E-Mail: ccsun10(aol.com
Name of Utility Company: CenturyLink
Acknowledge: acknowledge
Please describe your comment briefly:
I have several concerns about increasing the length of the allowed outage of service with
CenturyLink, who is my landline provider to my business, the Caribou County Sun, my home, and
my elderly mother's home, who is 94, lives along, and has macular degeneration making her
visually impaired.
First, I have always had excellent repair service from CenturyLink/Qwest. That is the reason
I rely upon them for service. My concern is if the service threshold is doubled to 48 hours,
it becomes a critical issue to my newspaper business for production deadlines via the
internet which the utility provides.
Certainly, I can change providers, but CenturyLink has been the most reliable in my opinion
at my location. The cost of a two-day delay in service interruption could be in the
thousands of dollars, plus potential loss of customers who depend upon me to get their
advertising and news to the public in a timely matter. Again, this has never become a
critical issue to date, but lowering the service bar makes me wonder. The customer credit for
missing the timeline is insignificant compared to potential losses.
Equally as important is my elderly mother, still able to live alone in a rural setting in
which we are a couple of hundred yards apart. Part of her security blanket is the hardline
telephone service in which she can push a highly marked telephone button to reach me by phone
at any time. Her other security crutch is an emergency device if she falls and cannot get
up. As you know, it alerts my three phone numbers, two others, and finally the 911 with an
emergency prerecorded message. That all goes down the tubes if the phone service is out and
now has the potential for a 48-hour repair window. This is pretty critical in rural
communities with the elderly.
Will these disruption of services occur for such lengths? Probably not, as they haven't in
the past.
But then if they haven't, why lower the bar to begin with? I chose and will stay with
CenturyLink/Qwest for those specific reasons of reliability of service of all types and see
no reason to change now. But please consider my concerns that are very crucial in the real
world of rural Idaho, both financially and for quality of life.
Thank you much,
1
Mark Steele
Editor/Publisher
Caribou County Sun
Soda Springs, Idaho
The form submitted on http://www.puc.idaho.gov/forms/ipucl/jpuc.htm].
IP address is 63.155.41.236