Verizon Making Progress in Restoration of Buffalo Area Telecommunications Network

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Verizon is continuing to aggressively work on restoration efforts in the Buffalo area, following the early season snowstorm that hit the region earlier this month.

With nearly 600 technicians in the field, Verizon expects to have its network fully restored within two weeks.

“While most of our customers are already back in service, or never experienced phone service outages in the wake of the storm, there is remaining field work necessary in order to fully restore our network,” explained Joseph DeMauro, regional vice president for Verizon operations.

To help with restoration efforts, Verizon has brought in more than 200 technicians from other parts of New York state to assist the local teams in repairs and other tasks, such as pole replacements, installing new drop wires and splicing new cables. 

“The work needed now includes repairs to service-affecting issues like low-hanging or unattached wires,” DeMauro said.  “Our employees are engaged in identifying these issues, making repairs and restoring service as quickly as possible.”

DeMauro noted that damaged cabling and wires may not cause a customer’s service to go out, but rather may cause static during a conversation, intermittent service, or similar conditions.  Since the start of the storm, the company has completed 68 percent of this type of weather-related repair work.

Verizon is also conducting engineering surveys of neighborhoods to identify downed wires and cables, and the company is working with local agencies and the power company to identify safe work areas as well as those areas needing telecom service.   Under standard safety procedure, Verizon employees are not permitted to enter neighborhoods until electricity is restored and all safety issues associated with power outages are cleared.

As of last Wednesday, less than one week after the storm hit, all of Verizon’s 80 central offices that serve the affected areas were back on commercial power.  Following the storm, 30 of the company’s central offices had continued to operate on battery or generator backup power.  All Verizon central offices – which perform the essential functions of supplying dial tone and routing calls and data transmissions for customers – are equipped with backup batteries and generators that kick in automatically if the electrical power supply is interrupted.  In addition, portable generators were used in locations where commercial power was interrupted for an extended period of time.

As always, Verizon reminds customers to contact the company and report any remaining service issues.  Residential customers can call 716-890-6611, and small-business customers can call 716-890-7711.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), a Dow 30 company, is a leader in delivering broadband and other wireline and wireless communication innovations to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America’s most reliable wireless network, serving nearly 55 million customers nationwide.  Verizon Business operates one of the most expansive wholly-owned global IP networks.  Verizon Telecom is deploying the nation’s most advanced fiber-optic network to deliver the benefits of converged communications, information and entertainment services to customers.  Based in New York, Verizon has a diverse workforce of more than 252,000 and generates annual consolidated operating revenues of approximately $90 billion.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com .

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