Phone troubles leave Essex residents feeling isolated, especially in times of emergency

When Tom Leverington returned to his home in Essex after a routine physical in Kalispell last May, he had no idea his life was in danger.

For more than a day, Leverington’s doctor tried desperately to call him on his CenturyLink landline to inform him that his kidneys were failing and he needed to reach a hospital immediately, but to no avail.

After the doctor finally got through, Leverington rushed to the hospital for treatment, but spent the rest of the year recovering.

Unfortunately for the small town of just over 150 residents, this story is a familiar one as CenturyLink appears to have hung up on its customers there.

For the better part of a decade, CenturyLink customers in Essex have dealt with everything from dropped calls and excessive static to ignored repair requests and complete lack of service for days and even weeks at a time. With cell phone coverage nearly nonexistent in the area, residents are often left with no way to reach the outside world.

For Tom’s wife Annette, the incident putting her husband’s life in danger was too much.

“I finally just got tired of it and I started to contact people. I drove to Kalispell to call CenturyLink about it on my cell phone, but the wait time was 127 minutes to get a representative,” she said. “I also spent 40 minutes with their online help chat to set up an appointment for service and then nobody showed up.”

The stories are the same for the Leverington’s neighbors throughout the community.

THE history of phone service in the area is a complicated one. The area was originally serviced by Mountain Bell, founded as a branch of Bell Telephone. Per federal mandate, Mountain Bell was divested from AT&T and merged with two other companies to form U.S. West Company in 1984. U.S. West was acquired by Qwest via hostile takeover in 2000 and Qwest was bought by CenturyLink in 2011. CenturyLink rebranded itself Lumen in 2020.

For John and Ginger Faust, the problems with their phone line go back 20 years, to the time shortly after U.S. West was acquired by Qwest.

When the couple arranged for phone service at their new home in Essex, Qwest came out to lay the line, but left the wire above ground. After a year of the connection being exposed to the snow and rain, John finally buried the cable himself. The issue is one that has been repeated several times over the years with other customers.

“I know it’s a financial thing. They don’t make enough money off the people up here to send technicians out here to fix our problems,” John said. “We are paying for access, so you think they should be obligated to take care of the problems, but they never do.”

“They tell you that they will show up between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. so you wait all day and then nobody shows up,” Ginger added.

When a snow plow knocked down the connection pedestal in front of Kenneth Wolf’s house six years ago, he put in a request for repairs. After weeks without response, Wolf took it upon himself to cover the exposed equipment with a garbage bag and duct tape. He replaced the bag two years later and it remained that way until CenturyLink finally covered the area with their own orange bag earlier this year. The pedestal has not yet been repaired and is just one of many that can be found leaning and damaged in the community, several with wires exposed to the elements.

The outages affect more than just the people of Essex. When the CenturyLink lines go down, so does the variable message sign in town operated by the Montana Department of Transportation.

According to DOT public information officer Lori Ryan, phone issues caused the sign to be down from Dec. 30, 2021 until Feb. 23 of this year, during which time the sign could not display messages. The messages unable to be displayed during that time included ones on Jan. 2 and 7 when Marias Pass was closed due to hazardous weather conditions.

According to Glacier National Park Chief Ranger Paul Austin, the CenturyLink service in the park is also known to go down, causing communication problems.

FOR BRANDIE Kittle, the unreliable phone service in the area is both a financial and a public safety concern.

With the remote location of Essex on the fringes of Flathead County, first responders can be miles away when needed. The sheriff's department, area fire departments, Montana Highway Patrol, National Forest Service and even the National Park Service work together in an effort to service the area, but spotty communication can provide a challenge.

When Kittle rolled her vehicle off the road this winter, she was lucky enough to be in an area with one bar of cell coverage. She was able to call 911 and have them send her husband (who was closer than first responders) to her location. Her question: What if their home phone had been out, which it often is?

“It’s ridiculous and I don’t think it’s legal. What if we have an emergency and can’t call 911,” she asked. “I would think the phone company has to notify us if they are going to be down for more than a few hours, but they never do.”

To make matters worse for Kittle, both she and her husband work from home but are often unable to receive calls.

“I called CenturyLink on my cell and was told they were replacing cable and the phone would be back on in a week. There was no notice, no warning whatsoever. I had no way to tell my clients that my phone was down,” she said. “We got service back for less than a week and then it was back down again. I called CenturyLink again and got the same excuse. This is affecting my business, my livelihood.”

Most aggravating to Kittle is the fact that an AT&T fiber optic line runs through her front yard, but she has no way to access it.

In fact, it appears the only location in town free of phone issues is the Izaak Walton Inn. Neighbors tell of a deal made by the Inn to hook up to the fiber optic line that follows the BNSF railroad track through the inn’s property. Unlike calls made to neighbors of the inn, a call to the Izaak Walton was immediately answered, but employees there would only say they are “contractually obligated not to divulge the details of their phone service provider.”

According to Geoff Feiss, the General Manager of the Montana State Telecommunications Association (which is well aware of the situation in Essex), any phone company could service the Essex area, if they are willing to invest the money to do so.

“Any phone company could serve Essex, if it were financially viable for them,” Feiss said. “Telecommunications is a very expensive enterprise and in rural parts of the country, it is not a sustainable business without some sort of external assistance. The infrastructure is horrendously expensive and the number of consumers that would pay off that expense is not sufficient to provide any kind of rate of return on that kind of investment.”

While phone companies do face financial difficulties when servicing rural areas, Feiss says that is no excuse for the way the people of Essex are treated.

“Should Qwest (CenturyLink) have done a better job of servicing Essex? Absolutely, positively, yes. Any company with the means that Qwest has should have the obligation of serving all of its customers with comparably good service, but they have failed to do so,” he said. “That is a travesty, but unfortunately that is the fate of the people who live along that U.S. Highway 2 corridor in that area. They are being left SOL with very few alternatives.

“Qwest still has an obligation to serve those customers, though,” Feiss said. “It’s their company’s territory and they have the money. They give that money to their shareholders and choose not to invest in their rural properties and that shows, not just in Essex but also all over the state.”

LUCKILY FOR the residents of Essex, there could be hope on the horizon.

A nearly identical situation in Wibaux County on the east side of the state has prompted the Montana Public Services Commission (PSC) to open an investigation into the adequacy of legacy infrastructure operated by CenturyLink. The organization is currently taking comments and complaints from CenturyLink customers via email at pschelp@mt.gov and by phone at 800-646-6150.

To date, the organization has received close to 30 complaints, but only two from the Essex area, with both of those coming in the past few days.

“Yes, we are aware of the problem in Essex and we are responding through the procedural tools available to us. We will have to see what we learn from our investigation before we can figure out an appropriate response,” PSC District 5 Commissioner Brad Johnson said. “These problems all stem from this old legacy landline technology. It’s all old, old stuff and it’s tough to keep it up and running. I’m hoping this docket will help us identify some alternatives and solutions that might be acceptable to the phone company and their customers.”

As for Lumen-CenturyLink, the company says it is working to improve service in rural Montana, but would not be more specific.

“In today’s competitive marketplace where different technologies are used to provide services to rural consumers, it’s difficult for any single provider to serve due to the cost of building and maintaining the network infrastructure,” Lumen-CenturyLink spokeswoman Danielle Spears said. “Policymakers have recognized this and are implementing historic levels of funding to support broadband grants aimed to build in rural Montana. We’re proud to serve our customers and are participating in Montana’s Broadband grant process as we recognize that consumers demand new technologies, products, and services.”

While Lumen-CenturyLink (using the Qwest name) has applied for $8.4 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding through the state’s ConnectMT program, it is unclear where the funds will be used. A summary of all applications received states the grant request is intended to fund fiber-to-the premise projects in 11 counties, including Flathead, but the summary fails to name the exact location of the projects.

Requests with the state to obtain the application went unanswered.

Daniel Stusek, Public Policy and Consumer Coordinator with the PSC, says the commission is not optimistic that upgrades will be coming to Essex any time soon.

“As far as we can tell, CenturyLink doesn’t intend to make any amazing upgrades to what they have out there in the near future,” he said. “We have been looking into the Wibaux situation, but we welcome and would be glad to get any official complaints from the residents of Essex as we continue to look into this situation as a whole.”

In the meantime, Tom Corl and his fellow Essex residents will be left figuring out who has a working phone at any given time.

“This calendar year, my phone has worked for maybe three weeks and I am paying $79 a month. A phone is just a worthless piece of junk around here. Service has been sporadic here for the last four years and it is just getting worse. I’ve had service two of the five days so far this month and I think that’s pretty damn good compared to what it has been,” he said. “One of these days it is really going to bite CenturyLink in the ass. Someone up here is really going to need the phone in an emergency and it is not going to be working. I just hope it is not me."