For about five weeks, Loretta Lawrence had no way to call for help. The West Valley City resident does not own a cellphone, relying entirely on her home phone line, and when that line went dead in June, she was left isolated with health problems and no way to dial an ambulance if something went wrong.
Lawrence contacted CenturyLink about the outage, but the company missed six separate repair appointments before her line was finally fixed, according to KSL News. She told the station her phone simply displayed “no line” no matter what she tried, and since she does not want a cellphone of her own, she had to borrow one just to keep chasing CenturyLink for updates.
“I was isolated and antsy and nervous,” Lawrence said, describing the toll the outage took on her. Without any working phone, she said, she could not have called an ambulance or reached anyone else if she needed emergency help.
A Contractor's Cut Line and a Wait for Permits
CenturyLink told KSL by email that a third-party contractor inadvertently cut a line during construction, and that the company was awaiting permits to repair it. In West Valley City, utilities and contractors are required to obtain a Right-of-Way Permit through the city's Engineering Division before excavating or repairing lines in city streets, with standard applications typically reviewed within seven business days, according to West Valley City. It remains unclear how that municipal timeline lined up against CenturyLink's own repair scheduling, or why six appointments were missed along the way.
While Lawrence waited, the bills kept arriving. Her statement did include an “out of service” credit, but it covered only about 25% of her total charges even though her phone had been completely dead the whole time. Federal Communications Commission rules bar telecommunications providers from enforcing billing charges for basic local voice service during extended periods when a line is completely out of service, a standard that appears to conflict with how Lawrence was initially billed.
A Fix That Came Only After Media Involvement
It wasn't until Get Gephardt, KSL's consumer-advocacy team, contacted CenturyLink about the outage and Lawrence's bill that things moved. Reporter Matt Gephardt's inquiry prompted the company to acknowledge it was aware of Lawrence's problem, and CenturyLink then promised her a full bill credit for all the time she went without service. The company also said it had not previously offered Lawrence an Air-Line device, a cellular LTE adapter that can restore basic phone service without waiting for copper line repairs.
Once CenturyLink provided that device, Lawrence's phone was working again immediately. The company said other customers affected by outages can request an Air-Line unit as well, and pointed customers to its support line at 877-644-4457 for help. The Air-Line V1600 model bypasses damaged copper lines using LTE, though corded handsets need an optional battery backup to keep working during power outages, according to CenturyLink's own product materials.
Why Landlines Still Matter for Seniors Like Lawrence
Lawrence's ordeal underscores a gap that cord-cutting trends tend to obscure. While 78.7% of U.S. adults lived in wireless-only households by late 2024, more than half of adults 65 and older still rely on landlines or keep one alongside a cellphone, according to estimates from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. For those residents, a dead landline is not just an inconvenience — in Salt Lake County, 911 calls placed from a traditional wired landline automatically transmit exact address data to the Valley Emergency Communications Center, while mobile calls must rely on cellular tower triangulation unless a phone is registered with local reverse-911 systems, per West Valley City.
Utah residents facing unresolved service or billing disputes with a utility do have a formal option: the Utah Division of Public Utilities allows customers to file an informal complaint, which requires the state to notify the provider within one business day and obligates the utility to respond within five business days, according to the Utah Department of Commerce. Lawrence's case appears to have been resolved through media pressure rather than that formal channel, but the state process remains available to other affected customers.
Part of a Broader Pattern for CenturyLink
Lawrence's experience echoes a similar situation Hoodline reported in Waconia earlier this summer, where dozens of CenturyLink landline customers in Minnesota faced multi-week dial tone outages tied to legacy equipment failures. In that case, too, CenturyLink deployed Air-Line wireless bridge devices and waived billing charges only after public outcry. Surging global copper prices have also fueled a nationwide uptick in copper wire theft, with local landline disruptions now averaging $8,735 per repair incident, according to the International Center for Law & Economics — a reminder that aging copper networks face physical vulnerabilities well beyond permit delays and missed appointments.
Federal regulators have also moved to speed up the retirement of legacy copper lines altogether. Under FCC rules updated in March 2026, carriers have an accelerated path to retire copper landline networks, though they must still give residential customers 90 days' written notice before discontinuing legacy service, and must notify state utility commissions and governors at least 180 days before full network retirement. Whether that shift will eventually require built-in battery backup provisions for cellular replacement devices like the Air-Line remains an open question for state regulators.
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