South Slope’s Phone Problems With Qwest Continue
By David DeWitte, The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Nov. 20–A dispute that has left Qwest customers in Cedar Rapids paying long distance rates to call Tiffin, Solon and Oxford customers of South Slope Cooperative Communications is refusing to die.
North Liberty-based South Slope said that it was bombarded over the weekend with complaints that Qwest customers in Iowa City couldn’t reach South Slope customers in Tiffin, Solon and Oxford.
Unlike the Cedar Rapids situation in which customers now have to pay long-distance rates to call the three Johnson County towns, the Iowa City Qwest customers simply couldn’t get through, according to J.R. Brumley, chief executive officer of North Liberty-based South Slope.
“Our on-call people were inundated with customers of Qwest from Iowa City who couldn’t call Solon, Tiffin and Oxford at all,” Brumley said.
Brumley said Qwest told the customers the problem was with South Slope, but he insists South Slope has done nothing that could cause the problem.
Qwest spokesman Kara Neuverth said the company has only identified isolated problems involving Sprint customers trying to reach Solon, Tiffin and Oxford. She said Qwest is working on the problem with Sprint.
The Iowa Utilities Board said it has received no formal complaints about the situation Monday morning.
The dispute follows a brief complication late last week involving difficulty for McLeodUSA customers in the Cedar Rapids area trying to dial the three Johnson County towns as a local call. Neuverth said the issue was a technical one that was resolved Friday.
The state’s utility regulator still hasn’t resolved the question of whether Qwest can legally charge Cedar Rapids Qwest customers for a long-distance call to reach South Slope customers in the three cities.
Qwest says it is required to change the way it bills for calls between Cedar Rapids and the South Slope customers in the three towns because of an Iowa Utilities Board ruling in a case involving Iowa Telecom, the incumbent telephone company in Oxford, Solon and Tiffin.
According to Qwest, the IUB found that South Slope’s customers in Tiffin, North Liberty and Oxford should no longer be treated as residing in the North Liberty rate center, but separate rate centers for their own towns.
As a result, Qwest officials said, Qwest said South Slope customers in the three towns were not covered by an extended area service agreement for South Slope’s North Liberty rate center.
In a filing Monday with state regulators, South Slope said Qwest has it wrong.
“Qwest confuses rate centers with exchanges,” said the regulatory filing by South Slope’s attorney, Michael May. “The indisputable fact of the matter is that all of the subject rate centers are within South Slope’s North Liberty exchange.” The filing said Qwest implemented the long-distance charges without obtaining approval of the Iowa Utilities Board, as required by Iowa statute.
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