City files complaint over communications failures
BY PHIL REYNOLDS SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

The city has filed a complaint with the Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC), the agency that oversees utilities statewide, about three communications outages on Mustang Island in the past three months.

City Manager Michael Kovacs was told at the city council meeting on Thursday, Jan. 17, to pursue the complaint with the PUC and to find out what alternatives the city's telephone provider, CenturyTel, has for ensuring communications aren't broken again.

Phone service, including Internet and long distance calls, went out on Oct. 23, when a contractor sliced through a fiber optic cable line on State Hwy. 361 at Zahn Road, on North Padre Island.

On Jan. 2, a contractor for the company that owns the cable, AT&T, was looking for that break to make a permanent repair when they chopped through the line again. That time, the city was left without Internet, long distance (including credit card transactions) or 9-1-1 emergency phone service (although the 9-1-1 loss came through the failure of a backup system, not because of the phone line cut).

Again on Jan. 10, the city lost Internet service when a circuit between San Marcos and Austin stopped working. Long distance phones weren't affected by that incident, said CenturyTel spokesman Tracey Moses, but it took crews working mostly at night two days to find and fix the problem.

Before the council meeting, Councilman Keith McMullin told the South Jetty he would ask that the matter be put on the council's agenda for discussion.

"What if it had happened in July or August (during the tourist season) or when we were preparing to evacuate for a hurricane?" McMullin asked.

Kovacs said in a letter, CenturyTel said they were working on the problem but made no promises. He added that the PUC had sent him a letter inviting a complaint.

Kovacs said possible backup plans include a system of microwave towers, once used by CenturyTel to provide phone service, and a fiber optic cable owned by Charter Communications that runs under the ship channel to Aransas Pass. Charter Communications provides cable TV service to Port Aransas.

The Coastal Bend Council of Governments has agreed to pay for a cable connection to Port Aransas emergency dispatchers to ensure that communications with other cities aren't interrupted again, he said.

During the discussion about how easy it could be to cut a fiber optic cable, council members also noted that Nueces County Water Control and Improvement District 4, which provides water for Port Aransas, isn't part of the "Texas One Call" program.

The program provides one phone number for contractors to call before digging; the central location notifies area utilities that someone is about to dig near their location. Utilities, in turn, will locate gas pipelines, electric lines and other utilities for diggers. However, according to the Texas One Call Web page, water systems are so-called Class B utilities and aren't required to be part of the one call system.

Council members also told Kovacs to talk with the water district to see if its board would elect to become part of that system.

Mayor Claude Brown pointed out that contractors are required by state law to call at least 24 hours before digging, so the utility lines can be located.

"They located it, all right," joked Councilman Charles Bujan.

"The thing that troubled me," McMullin said, "was that with that one line cut, everything was impacted, and we were back to the sleepy little fishing village."

McMullin said in his experience, any medium sized business would have some sort of redundancy for vital systems that would "cut in seamlessly."

He said he brought the matter before the council to learn what CenturyTel proposed to do to ensure that such an outage doesn't happen again.

Asked if the city had a choice of local phone service providers, Kovacs said in about two years, there would be choices. He said Charter Communications had told him they plan to unveil a telephone package then, and already had in place a cable-based phone system that would allow phone service over the Internet.

"There aren't a lot of those in the city right now," he said.

"It's not unlike some of the other battles we've fought," McMullin said. "We just need to be the squeaky wheel … and let them know we're not satisfied with six-hour outages that can occur again and again and again."

"As a business owner who's greatly affected by this, I'll be watching this closely," said Councilman Mike Hall. "If it doesn't move forward, I intend to pursue it myself. It shuts us down."

Hall was referring to the loss of telephone service, which is what businesses use to transmit and receive credit card information for transactions.

"I can just imagine trying to check into a hotel," Hall continued. "Not being able to check in for a whole day? That's a big deal for this town - especially in July."

"This is a priority," Councilman Rick Pratt agreed. "It's an emergency situation, almost. They can shut us down completely. I want to know what they're going to do about it."

"I'm hoping it doesn't become an us-versusthem situation," McMullin said. "(CenturyTel) has always been a good community partner."

The council took no official action in the form of a resolution or an ordinance on the agenda item, but made it clear they wanted an answer relatively quickly.

"You mentioned a squeaky wheel," Pratt said to McMullin. "Let's start squeaking."