By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
It’s Verizon calling with a surprise — a proposed 36 percent rate increase for Marcia Steinhauer and other New Jersey residents who use landlines.
“I do plan ahead on how I spend things and what I use it for. And that would be an imposition on me, over time,” Steinhauer said.
Steinhauer just turned 75 and unlike younger folks, she’s not always on a cell phone. Many seniors depend on their hardwired home phones — especially for medical devices like pacemakers and security alarms. Over five years, Verizon would raise those rates from $16.45 a month — rising a buck a year for four years, to two bucks the fifth year — to $22.45 a month.
“Communication rates are very high as it is, especially people on limited income — retirees. We need these forms of communication. It would be a very sad thing if they ignored our plight just to make more money,” Steinhauer said.
“To learn about this backroom deal and the process by which they’re contemplating railroading it through was just a shock. A shock,” said AARP NJ Associate State Director Evelyn Liebman.
Liebman says the rate increase is just one part of an agreement with New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities that would suddenly settle almost three years of legal wrangling with Verizon over deregulation. It would raise basic residential service more than 36 percent, single business lines 27 percent and home installation charges by 20 percent.
After five years there’d be no limits on rate hikes. Assemblyman Dan Benson says that leaves customers on the hook.
“And now seeing there might be a settlement without any input from the public on the details for this is unconscionable,” he said.
“I think it’s pretty radical. I think it’s a huge policy change. It’s a huge change that’s gonna impact people’s lives and I think more times needs to be taken to make sure this is really justified,” said New Jersey Division of the Rate Counsel Director Stefanie Brand.
Critics like Brand claim Verizon wants to focus growth on FioS and cellular service so it’s marginalizing its older, copper-wire infrastructure. And this deal also eliminates crucial state oversight of services and that worries Brand a lot.
“People coming forward that said, ‘I have a pacemaker and I have to have a landline in order to upload medical data to my doctor.’ If those landlines aren’t working properly and aren’t maintained properly, those people are gonna be in trouble. And those are the people that I’m very concerned about,” she said.
Of its landline customers, Verizon says, “…competitive choices remain available to them — even if they never choose to take advantage of them. And these customers still benefit from the overall competitive market. … The groups that oppose Verizon’s reclassification request and seek to retain monopoly-era regulation of Verizon are out of step with consumer preferences and the times…”
The Office of Rate Counsel says if the BPU refuses to conduct public hearings on this issue it will go to court and ask a judge to put this deal on hold.