Local Businesses Suffer As Frontier Outages Spread

The pizza dough was ready to be tossed; the fresh vegetables were ready to be diced and and the mozzarella cheese had already been shredded. Nevertheless, Dagwoods Pizza Parlor on Wilshire Blvd had to close early Sunday night, unable to take orders since the phone was down; unable to take internet orders, since their internet access was down, and unable to do business. Frontier was experiencing another widespread outage.

"It's a bad situation," said Dagwoods manager Mark Peters. "We can't take orders, and this is our big night of the week! We're really bummed out about the whole situation. I don't know if they (Frontier) realize that this has the potential to destroy small businesses."

Peters said Frontier's repair department told him they could promise a repairman would visit no sooner than June 6th. "That's just unacceptable," Peters said.

Update 5/30 12:48 PM PST: "Frontier did send a technician out this morning and got our phone lines and internet up and running. Business is running smoothly as usual now." --Mark Peters

Since Frontier Communications took over servicing Verizon's FiOS service, telephone lines and internet access in Southern California, the Internet is replete with reports of inaccurate bills, video on demand services not working, DVR recordings disappearing and overall discontentedness.

Last week, Frontier's representatives before a hearing for the California State Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce to talk about the issues and according to the LA Times, Frontier has pledged to resolve a backlog of problems within the next 10 days.

Matthew "C", who oversees the central office of Alcoholics Anonymous in Ventura County, was quoted as saying his office's phone lines have been working only intermittently since Frontier took over.

"This is a big problem," Matthew said. "These are 24-hour hotlines and we get calls from people who need to detox as well as people who are at their wit's end."

He said he's spent hours on the phone (mostly on hold) trying to fix things.

Chino resident Donna Henley said on-demand movies have disappeared from her FiOS TV service since Frontier rode into town.

What outages have you experienced? Please let us know through our blog comment lines and e mail. And we'll post it here--that is, if we can get online!