Dr. Ida Messana, a Queens internist specializing in geriatric medicine, started experiencing internet, fax and landline phone issues in her Forest Hills office last summer and noticed a concerning side effect.
Many of her elderly patients, who depend on phone calls and faxes, as opposed to emails and texts, stopped coming because they could not reach her.
“We lost dial tone on my fax line, so I couldn’t receive or send any faxes. Imagine my patients waiting for their CAT scans, X-rays, their reports of blood, all different kinds of things,“ she explained.
Turned out her fax machine was working, but the line was out. She also relied on the line for DSL internet service to her office.
While her connectivity problems were resolved five months later, Messana fears future service outages. A Verizon technician told Messana that her phone lines are copper, which the company phased out in favor of fiber optic wires.
Most telecommunications companies these days tout their high-speed fiber optic lines, which send light down thin filaments of glass, but copper wires are still in use for some households.
When those metal wires corrode without proper upkeep, New Yorkers who rely on them are left without service.