Editor’s Note: If you have Brightspeed telephone and/or internet service, this article will be of particular interest. If your Brightspeed service fails, you will want to file a complaint with the FCC. Brightspeed will respond to FCC complaints because the FCC grants Brightspeed an exclusive license to serve an area of the country. If they fail to provide service, the FCC can cancel the service monopoly and award it to another provider.
Internet for much of Pamlico County is supplied by Brightspeed using Digital Service Line (DSL) for relatively slow internet. Spectrum, on the other hand, supplies internet over coaxial cable and has significantly higher data rates. The vendor that was selected to bring high speed fiber-optic internet to Pamlico has extremely high data rates.
As this article is being written, the US Government is shut down, therefore no complaints to the FCC can be accepted. However, when the government is back open, here is the procedure to file complaints against Brightspeed for loss of phone and/or DSL internet service.
Only the Brightspeed system has provisions for the customer to test the service for operation. This means that a customer can take a telephone with a modular phone jack on its cable to the terminal box interface supplied by Brightspeed on the exterior of the house. The terminal box has a provision that a customer can open the outer cover, unplug a phone cable from the jack and by plugging in your telephone, you can determine if the service from Brightspeed is active. If you hear a dial tone, you are pretty well assured that the telephone service is operable. If you hear a high speed swishing noise over the dial tone, then you know the internet service is also available. If you hear neither sound, then you know the service is not coming from Brightspeed to your house and the company will be responsible to make repairs. If the problem is inside your house, typically it will be your financial responsibility to make the repairs.
Tip: The drywall in your home is made of gypsum, which is electrically conductive. In Colorado, our phone did not work after I installed wiring in the basement to extend the phone system. I found that drywall dust had gotten into one of the phone jacks and shorted it out so we had no phone or internet service. It was a simple matter to find where the gypsum dust was on the carpet and use the vacuum to clean out of the jack and remove the gypsum dust, and our phone and internet service were both restored. You will probably have to remove the wall cover plate to get to the gypsum dust.
To file a complaint with the FCC against Brightspeed, go to http://www.FCC.Gov/Consumer. Scroll down to a large blue rectangle labeled “Consumer Complaint Center.” In the rectangle’s bottom right corner is a yellow button labeled “Start your complaint.” Click on it. Scroll down to a section that has many different issues listed. In the top left area is one labeled “Phone Issues” and immediately to its right is another one labeled “Internet”. You should click on the “Phone Issues” as it covers your telephone service as well as Brightspeed’s DSL internet service, even if you still have internet.
Fill in the form. Be sure to list the days you have been without service. Sometimes the internet will work, but the phone service will not. Sometimes you lose both services. If your Brightspeed phone service supports your business, let the FCC know that fact. If you do not have any alternate means of connection to the telephone network, be sure to mention this point also. Should you have a lifeline service such as heart monitor that you call in to your doctor’s office or a security system such as ADT, these service losses should also be reported. Also the North Carolina Attorney General’s office should be contacted by internet and a complaint filed with that office. You should document the number of times you called Brightspeed, the ridiculous response times you were quoted, and demand compensation for your service loss.
In my case my phone service went down in June, but I still had internet. I was given an appointment for a service technician to come to my home about a month later in July. Miraculously my service was returned on the day before the service appointment. When Brightspeed called that day to confirm the appointment, I foolishly reported that my service was restored, so they canceled the service call. Bam! The next day, I lost all phone and internet service!
My experience with filing my complaint on the FCC website has been to get service restored in about 13 hours after pressing the Send button. A business associate of mine followed the same procedure, and their service was restored in about 17 hours. Each time, Brightspeed had given us service restoration dates about a month away.
Here is wishing you the same success.
Gordon is a frequent contributor to The County Compass
