Skoufis, a Democrat from the 42nd District, says his office has received “dozens” of calls from constituents in Orange County, reporting either significant outages in their internet or declines in the overall quality of service.
Peter Romeo, a high school teacher from Central Valley, is one of them. He says he has been roughly four months without internet, ever since a mid-April car crash damaged the wires outside his home on State Route 32. Speaking with WAMC Monday, Romeo says he initially tried to get his service provider, Optimum, to fix it, with no luck. He then contacted Frontier Communications, also without any luck. Every time an installer came to work by his home, Romeo says he was told the same thing.
“Basically every one of these installers, who seemed to be third-party contractors, would look up at the pole and then tell me, ‘Oh yeah, we can’t work there. We’re forbidden to do that,'" Romeo explains.
Skoufis says the New York State Department of Transportation has issued multiple “stop work orders” for select utility and broadband service providers, citing violations of safety rules and regulations. Which providers and what rules they violated, however, Skoufis says he doesn’t know for sure.
“I can’t unequivocally say that every blip that is occurring throughout Orange County and throughout the region is attributable to this stop work order," says Skoufis. "But I imagine in some of those cases that it is related to these companies’ inability to provide maintenance to their infrastructure.”
A spokesperson for NYSDOT tells WAMC the following: “Safety is always the top priority of the New York State Department of Transportation. This is not about trying to stop people from having internet access. It’s about making sure no one is killed and the work on our highways is being done safely. While the Department recognizes the importance of telecommunications in this age of interconnectivity, we have a responsibility to ensure that all work to construct and maintain such installations is done properly and will not endanger the traveling public or workers. The firms in question were cited for repeated serious safety and highway work permit violations and ordered to stop work until the violations were resolved."
A spokesperson for Spectrum says they’re not included in the orders. Frontier did not return a request for comment Monday. An Optimum representative tells WAMC its order was recently lifted, adding, “Optimum shares the senator’s commitment to quality customer experience. The stop work order was recently resolved, and we remain focused on serving our Hudson Valley customers.”
Skoufis says getting information has been difficult in recent weeks. The Democrat sent a letter to NYSDOT on August 5 asking for more information, including a timeline for when the orders will be resolved. He also asked NYSDOT to “facilitate prompt and clear channels of communication” with utilities like Frontier and his office to expedite any emergency repairs.
“I’m a lot less interested in playing the blame game than I am in getting this resolved and getting internet back into households who desperately need it," says Skoufis.
Skoufis says New York state has come a long way in improving broadband access across the state, but many rural areas are still catching up. But in this case, many of the complaints he’s hearing are from residents in more densely-populated areas — although he also notes that there are naturally fewer people to complain in rural towns.
To plug the gap, Romeo says his family has been using a cellular home internet service from T-Mobile. He says it covers their basic needs, but it’s been anywhere from difficult to impossible for his kids to do their schoolwork online, or for him to attend virtual meetings.
“I understand the need to adhere to regulations, but it just seems like it’s the people here who are being punished. Not the companies, not the people who broke the rules. It's the people who need these services," says Romeo. "It’s 2025, the internet isn’t a luxury anymore, it’s a necessity.”
