Please take a few minutes to read this notice as you may be experiencing this issue and were unaware of the cause or what you could do to help!

In recent months, Alpine Communications and other rural telephone companies across the United States have experienced increasing problems with the completion of long distance calls. In addition to calls simply not completing, the quality of some of the calls, when they do complete, is very poor. For example, your phone may not ring yet you will later see a missed call on your Caller ID. Or, you will hear the phone ring and try to pick up the call but cannot hear the caller’s voice. Another scenario being reported is poor voice quality, such as static or echoes, which make it difficult to carry on a conversation. Alpine has also received more and more reports of troubles with sending or receiving faxes.

What is going on? Because of the reliability of the telephone network for years and years, we take it for granted that when someone in another city or state tries to call you or your business, the call will complete, your phone will ring and you will be able to carry on a conversation without any issues or poor call quality. The problems experienced by Alpine Communications and other local telephone providers are frustrating and costly to both you as our customer and to us as a business. These calling problems are not caused by Alpine, and cannot be “fixed” by Alpine. The problem calls, which move from one telephone network to a second network and perhaps a third or fourth network along the way, are not even reaching the Alpine network.

Alpine has actively participated in information gathering sessions with other local telephone companies as well as with national telephone associations. These issues have been presented to the Federal Communications Commission, urging them to investigate and find the cause of the long distance call completion issues. This is a growing epidemic and is causing great concern in the telephone industry.

If someone is attempting to call you, and experiences any issues with call completion or poor call quality, Alpine encourages you to gather as many details about the call as possible and call us to report these details. This information is very useful as we actively seek a solution to the call completion issues. If possible, we ask that you gather the following information for each problem call:

• The time the call was placed
• The phone number from which the call was originated
• The name of the caller’s long distance or wireless provider
• Details about what happened (my phone did not ring, I picked up the phone to answer a call and there was dead air, the caller could hear me but I could not hear the caller, etc.)

Please call (563) 245-4000 for the Customer Service.  They will log your call as well as the details related to the call completion issue. Thank you for your patience as Alpine Communications and other rural telephone providers work together to resolve the call completion problem.