Verizon Wireless On Wheels Available At Good Shepherd Plaza For Those Without Phone Service - 6 Days Since Roosevelt Island Phone Outage Caused By Cables Cut During Riverwalk Building 7 Construction

Image Of Verizon Wireless On Wheels at Roosevelt Island Good Shepherd Plaza

As reported November 9:

... a cable mistakenly cut last Thursday during the construction of Southtown Riverwalk building 7 caused the loss of Verizon land line phone service and Time Warner cable service to large portions of Roosevelt Island. Time Warner Cable service was restored later that evening but Verizon land line phone service is still out of service and it is not known yet when service will be restored....

Image Of Southtown Riverwalk Building 7 Construction Site

The Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) just sent out the following update:

Verizon has installed a "Wireless on Wheels" trailer on Good Shepherd Plaza on the south side of the Good Shepherd Community Center. This trailer, which is available free of charge, is equipped with fifteen cell phones, I- Pads for checking e-mails, and Wi-Fi service. The trailer will available until service is fully restored. Please feel free to avail yourself of these services.

Sincerely,

Roosevelt Island Operating Corp Advisories Group

A Verizon Spokesperson added this afternoon:

Four of our cables were cut, two fiber and two copper. In round numbers, it was about 1,300 lines. The fiber cables were restored over the weekend, and that was about 400 lines/customers. The copper cables are much more difficult to restore, they require much more splicing. We have restored about another 400 lines thus far on one of the copper lines. As we continue to splice “pairs” within the cables, customers will be restored over the next couple of days. In addition, we have given some voice phones and Jetpacks (for data) deployed yesterday to Public Safety group on RI for distribution to residents who have urgent need. We are also setting up a mobile trailer that contains phones for residents’ use.

UPDATE 4:15 PM - From RIOC

Please be advised that the Verizon trailer service will be available from 9 A.M. until 5 P.M. daily.

Sincerely,

Roosevelt Island Operating Corp Advisories Group