Michigan Radio & TV Buzzboard

Went to make a call at 1:00 yesterday. No bars. Here's why:

https://www.wilx.com/content/news/New-i ... 74181.html

Verizon said a third-party provider's fiber cable was cut. Killed wireless service to Lansing, Jackson and multiple outlying areas in southern lower Michigan for about seven hours. Interesting to watch people react, especially younger folks who have never experienced life without cell phones. Even we old(er) farts were reminded just how much we've become accustomed to that level of connectivity. Gave me a chance to reminisce about the days when the phone was a gadget that plugged into the wall and stayed in the house while we ran our errands. Thank God we had our CB radios!

Wow - all those companies are passing the buck. Verizon blames U.S. Signal. U.S. Signal blames an unnamed property management company. Unnamed property management company blames contractor. Unbelievable.

BTW, the spokesman for Verizon interestingly enough is a former WXYZ Detroit news reporter.

Many of the Verizon stores in the affected area closed up shop during the outage. On one hand it doesn't look good for P.R. On the other hand I can see store managers not wanting to deal with a barrage of angry customers converging on them for something that was out of their control. Some stores posted signs advising customers to use WiFi calling in the interim.

We have Total Wireless, which uses Verizon's towers but doesn't offer the WiFi calling option on their phones. Fortunately we have the Zello walkie-talkie app installed on our phones so the family can communicate over WiFi. The WILX report said that 911 calls will route to any available network regardless of the primary provider. Good to know for future reference.