After Sandy's destruction, Verizon switches to all-wireless service in Mantoloking
MANTOLOKING — Devastated and wiped out by superstorm Sandy, Verizon has no plans to rebuild its copper-line telephone network in Mantoloking.
Instead, Verizon says Mantoloking is the first town in New Jersey, and one of the few areas in the country, to have a new service called Verizon Voice Link. Essentially, it connects your home’s wired and cordless telephones to the Verizon Wireless network.
The company actively is marketing the service and has signed up about 30 customers so far.
“Our technicians connect Voice Link into the telephone lines in your home, allowing you to use your home telephones to make and receive calls just like you did before,” reads a mailer being sent to area residents.
How does it work? A Verizon technician installs a small box with an antenna in your home. It plugs into an electrical socket and a telephone jack, which powers all the telephone jacks in the house. The device also accepts AA batteries or has a rechargeable battery pack if there is a power outage. Three AA batteries provide 36 hours of standby time.
Rather than go out over telephone lines, calls are made over Verizon Wireless.
The service includes unlimited nationwide calling and emergency 911 service. Other features such as Caller ID and voice mail also are available.
Installation is free and the prices are set at or below what the customer was paying previously, Verizon said.
“It acts just like a regular phone,” said Tom Maguire, Verizon’s senior vice president of national operations. “There’s a dial tone. It has 911 capability, so if you dial 911 the emergency services guys are going to know exactly where you are.”
Voice Link is a product of Verizon’s attempts to replace its traditional telephone service over copper lines in places where the network is deteriorating, whether from water seeping into lines or other damage. It is used in areas where there are no fiber-optic lines, another alternative for telephone service.
“Now we’re finding that we’re able to go into areas like Mantoloking down the block here where the copper infrastructure was wiped out,” Maguire said Thursday outside of a Verizon mobile sales center on Route 35 in Bay Head. “If we have plain dial-tone customers, we can now leverage this technology that we were working on anyway to serve the customers.”
Rebuilding the copper lines is not an option for the company, Maguire said.
The market for traditional telephone service is shrinking.
Maguire said people now have more options, including cutting the traditional telephone cord completely and just using a cellphone, or signing up for service bundles that include television, telephone and high-speed Internet access. Those bundles are offered by Verizon and cable companies.
“If you go down the block, there are people that are using other technologies so I can spend a fortune running copper down there and have nobody use it,” Maguire said. “In areas where copper is completely shot, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to put more copper out there.”
Verizon has its fiber-optic network in other parts of Ocean County’s barrier peninsula hit hard by Sandy, including Ortley Beach, Normandy Beach and Brick. There are no plans to bring fiber to Mantoloking.
Voice Link customers will find the service reliable and secure, Maguire said. It’s not impacted by trees knocking down utility wires or cars hitting telephone poles.
Mantoloking resident Ken Mac Pherson, 77, has signed up for Voice Link.
“I had regular phone service, but we couldn’t get any service” in the area after Sandy, Mac Pherson said.
His son and daughter were worried they would have no way to contact someone in the event of a problem, he said.
“My daughter and son are the ones that worked on this to get this and said to me ‘We think we have it for you, Dad.’ (Verizon) came and put it in,” Mac Pherson said. “It’s working fine. No problem.”
