CHAFFEE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE

Salida, Colorado

PRESS RELEASE

July 23, 2018

On Friday, July 20, 2018, I was contacted by Susan Sherwood, Senior Manager of 911 Compliance for Verizon Wireless, in regards to the most recent Verizon Cellular outage. During this outage, users of the Verizon network lost cellular service from Friday June 29 to Tuesday afternoon, July 3^rd. During this outage 911 service in Chaffee County was mostly unavailable to Verizon customers because the network was inoperable. During this same time period I filed a complaint with the FCC in regards to the lack of redundancy built into the Verizon network.

Ms Sherwood explained that an extensive test of the network was done due to the information brought forward by myself. She stated that in fact many cell towers that serve Chaffee County were in fact inoperable due to the damage to fiber optic cable caused by the fire in Huerfano County. Ms Sherwood went on to say that Century Link has agreed to add additional fiber optics to their system. She stated that Verizon leases usage of Charter fiber optics, however this fiber optic network is owned by Century Link. She stated that with the additional fiber optic cable in place it will put in place the capacity for redundancy in the network and will resolve this issue for the Verizon network in Chaffee County. Ms Sherwood stated that Centiry Link advised that the additional fiber optics should be operational within 30 days.

Another issue that was resolved was the priority service provided to the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office by Verizon Wireless. All Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office phones have been tested and perform as they should in the case of any type of service disruption.