The war of words over who caused the blackout of phone and Internet service to thousands of people in Georgetown County continued Tuesday.

Ron Charlton, owner of Southern Coastal Cable, issued a statement saying that Altus Communications Group, “used valued customers as bargaining chips while we were working through” contractual issues.

Meanwhile, Altus Communications owner Kelvin Williams said Tuesday was the last day that his company would provide any assistance for inbound calls to SCC customers.

Stiff regulations

Meanwhile, the FCC has strict regulations in place to try to prevent a sudden disruption in phone service, according to FCC officials.

They declined to specifically comment on the situation in Georgetown. But they said the agency’s regulations require that the provider — usually the company to whom the customer pays — tell customers their service is going to go dark.

   The rules, according to FCC.gov., say: “You must notify your customers in writing as far in advance as possible if you are going to discontinue, reduce or impair domestic service for any reason, even if you may file or have filed for bankruptcy.”

The notice to customers, according to FCC regulations,  should include the carrier’s name and address, the date service will go down, the description of the service and the areas impacted by the loss of phone service.

The regulations say there has to be 31 days notice after a letter is sent to customers before the phone service is shut down.

“All companies, whether or not they are under bankruptcy protection, must comply with the FCC's discontinuance rules,” according to FCC.gov.  “The FCC may impose penalties on carriers for failing to comply with the rules.”

FCC spokesman Mark Wigfield said he didn’t know if the agency was contacted about the problems here.

Held ‘hostage’

Charlton said in his news release that, “Altus Communications intentionally took the service offline without warning as a punitive measure during the negotiations.”

“This action caused the service interruption,” Charlton said.

“Holding our customers hostage in an attempt to dictate a settlement favorable to our former technology provider is unacceptable to us,” Charleston said. “So at the point that the previous technology provider took our services offline, we began transitioning services to a new technology provider.

“Southern Coastal Cable’s employees and the new technical provider’s technical teams were able to start to bring subscribers back online within hours, a process that can take months to accomplish in many cases.”

Williams said earlier that he had warned Southern Coastal Cable about the potential shutoff of service.

“We are fully aware of the impact a service shutdown [causes] on not only our affiliates, but more importantly the end-users of our services.

“Because of this, we strive to resolve issues before shutting down any service, and carefully evaluate applicable laws, agreements, and the impact upon our end-users.

Today’s shutdown was no different, in fact, we tried for over two weeks to resolve issues amicably with our affiliate; however our affiliate’s actions ultimately led to the shutdown,” he said.

By Kelly Marshall Fuller

Kfuller@gtowntimes.com