Congressman calls for AG, FCC investigations into service outages across rural Arizona

Arizona congressman Tom O'Halleran sent letters to both the state Attorney General's Office and the Federal Communications Commission calling for investigations into whether the phone and internet service outages that impacted thousands of people in rural Arizona last weekend were the result of negligence by Frontier Communications.  

“‘Unacceptable’ does not begin to describe the situation that St. Johns families have experienced these past few days; they are living in dystopian-like conditions, unable to dial 911 or use their gas pumps,” O’Halleran said in a statement. “Frontier’s inability to provide communications services is a threat to not only Arizona’s power supply, but the broader Western U.S. Power System, law enforcement and emergency services’ ability to communicate among themselves and with the public, and the safety of all local families."

Authorities can link at least one death directly to the outages as an elderly St. Johns resident was found on the floor of his home Sunday and bystanders were unable to call 911 for some time. Service disruptions lasted for nearly 48 hours — from Saturday to Monday — across the entirety of Apache County and most of neighboring Navajo County, according to St. Johns Police Chief Lance Spivey.

"Public safety professionals in this region — we deserve better, the public deserves better," Spivey previously told The Republic. "We take our profession very seriously and when we can't do our job protecting basic human life or provide medical treatment appropriately, it's shameful."

O'Halleran represents the state's first congressional district which includes large rural areas that have been dealing with these service issues for years. 

"Our office has received reports detailing significant and frequent outages in communication networks across in Apache County and Navajo County in recent years, and it appears that little has been done to remediate and prevent future outages from happening," O'Halleran wrote in his letter to the Attorney General's office on Thursday, two days after sending his letter to the FCC. 

The Arizona Corporation Commission which regulates public utilities in the state previously investigated Frontier Communications for outages impacting emergency services as early as April 2020, in which the company was found to have 66 hours of 911 service interruptions between then and April the following year. 

Death from outage: Northern Arizona man dies after bystanders could not call 911 due to service outage

Further, the commission found that "Frontier demonstrated that while it was prepared to respond to outages, it appeared not to be doing enough to prevent the outages," the Commission's March 2022 decision reads

The Corporation Commission acknowledged Wednesday it was aware of the weekend outages but declined to specifically comment on the case citing their ongoing investigation. 

Multiple attempts to reach Frontier Communications for comment were unsuccessful. 

Contact reporter Lacey Latch at llatch@gannett.com or on social media @laceylatch. Coverage of northern Arizona on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is funded by the nonprofit Report for America and a grant from the Vitalyst Health Foundation in association with The Arizona Republic.