Quay County experiencing cell tower issues

Disabled Tucumcari resident Derrick Matthews endures muscular dystrophy, diabetes and heart problems that require him to make frequent phone calls to set up appointments with Albuquerque doctors and arrange transportation there.

Since late April, making those phone calls has proven impossible or time-consuming because the Tucumcari area lost the Sprint cellular signal required to operate both his cellphones. One is a Boost Mobile phone; the other is an Assurance phone. Both require a Sprint signal to operate.

The Quay County Sun heard from scores of Tucumcari residents with cellphones from Sprint, Assurance Wireless, Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile - all which use a Sprint signal - who said they've been without voice, data or both services since about April 26. The service remained down as of Monday, Matthews said.

Matthews said Thursday the latest reason he heard from a provider for his cellphone problems was a "cell tower site shortage." It promised it would be resolved in 24 to 48 hours. He remained skeptical.

"There's got to be something wrong mechanically," he said. "There's no way it should be down for three weeks."

Emailed questions by the Quay County Sun to Sprint and Virgin Mobile about the outage were not answered. Boost Mobile requests that all media inquiries go through Sprint.

An Assurance spokeswoman on Sunday stated in an email that service was "impaired due to a Market Outage, any and all Voice Services may be affected. This means that there would be an increased number for dropped calls, blocked calls or even voice call quality problems (garbled, static and echoes). Any and all services may be affected. Technicians are working to resolve the issue."

Matthews, who lives in a motel along Route 66 in Tucumcari, eventually uploaded a TextNow app to one of his phones that was supposed to allow him to use its voice feature through his room's Plateau wireless internet. But he said it's a "dicey" connection.

As a result, calls to doctors that should take no more than 10 minutes often take hours, Matthews said.

"It takes at least a day or two to set up an appointment," he said.

One of Matthews' neighbors at the motel, Dennis Venckus, also owns a now-useless Assurance cellphone and said it's not the first time the Sprint signal has died in Tucumcari. He said it went down for several days around Thanksgiving in 2017 and dropped again from about Christmas 2017 to New Year's 2018.

Assurance phones, subsidized by the government and provided to the poor, frequently are called ObamaPhones, although the Lifeline program from which they sprung dates to the Ronald Reagan administration in the mid-1980s. Assurance phones use only the Sprint network.

One Tucumcari woman with an Assurance phone who contacted the Quay County Sun but did not wish to be named said Assurance told her the outage was because of "ongoing tower enhancements" that were supposed to take no more than 72 hours.

In the meantime, the woman's sister died, and relatives grew frantic because they couldn't contact her about the death. She's contemplating buying another cellphone not on the Sprint network, but to do so, she said would have to go without food for a week because of her meager income.

It's not just poor people affected by the lack of Sprint coverage. Yvette Peacock, who co-owns a popular restaurant along Route 66 in Tucumcari, said her Sprint cellphone's voice function works fine, but its data function hasn't for weeks.

"They just always says they are working on the towers and hope to have it up soon," she said. "They have given me a couple of credits for lack of service, but I would rather have the service."

Peacock stated her phone's lack of data service has led to inconveniences, "especially if my staff texts me with an urgent message."

Tucumcari resident Jennifer Marquez, who uses a Virgin phone, said this outage "was the worst and the longest I have been without service."

After a promise on May 3 that service would be restored in 72 hours, Marquez said Virgin told her May 5 that "updating the towers" might take up to three weeks. Frustrated, she said she is switching to Metro PC.

Marquez, a home-care provider, said the lack of cellular service has proved to be a hassle.

"I use my phone to clock in and out of clients' homes," she said. "I was not able to clock in, and my supervisors were upset I had to turn in paper timesheets. ... I am an assistant manager at my other job. I get lots of calls from work, and I have been unable to receive them. I am very frustrated with the whole situation."

One woman left a message with the Quay County Sun's answering machine last week about problems with her cellphone. But much of the message was unintelligible because the signal apparently kept dropping.