{"id":103146,"date":"2025-07-29T22:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T22:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/103146\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T22:02:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T22:02:12","slug":"franklin-county-neighbors-left-without-internet-and-phone-service-for-over-a-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/103146\/","title":{"rendered":"Franklin County neighbors left without internet and phone service for over a week"},"content":{"rendered":"

FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. (WDBJ) – People living on Mary Bett Hollow Road in Franklin County\u2019s Ferrum depend on Brightspeed Internet <\/a>for their internet service, and since there\u2019s no cell phone signal in the rural area, they also depend on it to make phone calls.<\/p>\n

Now, they\u2019ve been without service for over a week, and in some cases, over three weeks. They say it\u2019s causing them major problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of crushing for us. My wife just came back from the hospital, she had a total hip surgery, to coordinate with physical therapy, and coordinate appointments, and stuff like that, every time we want to call somebody or communicate, we have to drive about an hour, half an hour each way to town,\u201d said Michael Krawitz, who lives on Mary Bett Hollow Road.<\/p>\n

Krawitz said after losing service, he became frustrated with Brightspeed, and he soon learned his neighbors were having the same problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked Brightspeed to come out and repair it, and they gave me a repair date like three or four weeks out. I\u2019ve never had that before. I\u2019ve had repair calls with the phone company where they come out in a week or something like that, but almost a month out seemed unusual to me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Krawitz and his wife are one of five families on Mary Bett Hollow Road who have been without phone and internet service for over a week. 89-year-old Rebecca Shively has been dealing with the problem for even longer; she has been without service for three weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been hard emotionally. It gets on my nerves because I think about how I can\u2019t do anything without a phone or internet, because I pay all my bills online,\u201d said Shively. \u201cI don\u2019t sleep well because it gets on my mind, and I can\u2019t sleep. It\u2019s not good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shively said Brightspeed told her three weeks ago it would come out to restore her service on July 29, but so far, service has not been restored. She said she also can\u2019t communicate with Brightspeed because of the lack of phone service.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been calling my sister-in-law, going out at 6:00 in the morning in the dark, and sometimes I get enough signal on my cellphone to call her. But this morning and yesterday morning, I couldn\u2019t do that, nothing, cellphones won\u2019t work here,\u201d said Shively.<\/p>\n

Brightspeed said the issue is due to downed utility poles that have damaged its service lines. Michael Love filed a complaint against Brightspeed with the FCC on behalf of his neighbors, which the FCC said was served on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked in communications for 31 years before I retired. The company I worked for, we weren\u2019t perfect, but nobody would be without service for three weeks under normal circumstances. If you had a major ice storm, tornado, or a hurricane, I understand that, but for no reason just three weeks out?\u201d said Love.<\/p>\n

Love and his wife switched from Brightspeed to Starlink earlier in the year after continued service issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got Starlink, I thought I was done. I said, \u2018I\u2019m not going to have to worry about it anymore.\u2019 But then Becky tells me her service is out and she\u2019s not getting a service call until the 29th, which is today. I was like, \u2018That\u2019s unacceptable, \u2019\u201d said Love.<\/p>\n

Love said the neighbors have been helping each other out as best they can. He said this is not the first time Brightspeed customers in Franklin County have had issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see and hear it every day. I know there are some people out there that probably get great service from them, but I think in the more rural offshoot areas, they\u2019re just not maintaining their equipment,\u201d said Love.<\/p>\n

Michael Krawitz said seeing the damaged service lines in the woods has been frustrating.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just like a tree fell down, a branch broke, and knocked a wire down. There is enough debris, trees, and stuff down on that line that you can tell it hasn\u2019t been maintained in a while. We really do feel kind of abandoned out here by Brightspeed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Brightspeed Public Relations Director Gene Miller provided the following statement to WDBJ7 regarding the situation:<\/p>\n

Our priority is providing our customers with the services they depend on. Unfortunately, customers living off of Mary Bett Hollow Road in Ferrum, Virginia, are experiencing service interruptions due to downed utility poles causing damage to our service lines. <\/p>\n

Additionally, our repair crews are challenged by a highly overgrown right-of-way impeding the ability to replace the downed poles. Our crews are currently awaiting utility locate requests to be complete in order to start replacing the poles and the damaged line. <\/p>\n

We anticipate our crews will complete this work by the end of the week, assuming the requests are completed quickly, which will restore services to our customers. We know this is frustrating and we ask for their patience. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 WDBJ. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. (WDBJ) – People living on Mary Bett Hollow Road in Franklin County\u2019s Ferrum depend on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":103147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[66803,66802,9524,712,66805,51193,66804,66051,14482,66806,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-103146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-brightspeed-internet","9":"tag-ferrum","10":"tag-franklin-county","11":"tag-internet","12":"tag-internet-connection","13":"tag-internet-service","14":"tag-mary-bett-hollow-road","15":"tag-neighbors","16":"tag-outage","17":"tag-phone-service","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114938783028499088","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}