Growth clogs calls for phone service

Already have a telephone that rings?

Lucky.

Rose Calpito, 28, waited 10 days for Sprint service to her new Summerlin home.

"I was supposed to have it on a Friday, and they didn't give me service for that whole weekend," Calpito said.

Actually, Sprint couldn't give her service for the rest of that week or part of the next. The company loaned her a cellular telephone to use in the interim, but even that was a little inconvenient, she said.

"They issued me that cell, but I had to come down here to get it," Calpito said minutes after returning the phone to Sprint's Valley View Boulevard office earlier this week.

"I had to come down here to tell them (regular service) wasn't working, too," she said. "I tried to call, but it was always busy."

Busy is right, Sprint spokesman Rob McCoy said.

The company is getting about 20,000 orders for new service every month, which means Las Vegas newcomers could wait anywhere from 10 days to eight weeks for a hookup.

The average delay for a new line is a little less than two weeks, McCoy said. But in some rare instances, residents of newer, sprawling neighborhoods to the south, west and northwest are waiting much longer.

"It's a big challenge. We're doing everything we can," McCoy said. "We're working crews overtime. We've got contract workers as well."

Sprint workers are logging overtime to catch up, but it's tough, crew supervisor John Sullivan said. His teams have been putting in 10- and 12-hour days for at least three years.

It's tough on the budget, too, McCoy said. Projected costs for providing service to the Las Vegas Valley over the next five years have risen from $375 million to $800 million.

"Even in the older neighborhoods, we have growth in requests for second and third lines," McCoy said. "We probably have more requests for second and third telephone lines than any other city in America."

Las Vegas residents love their computer toys. About 57 percent of households have a personal computer, compared to about 40 percent nationally, McCoy said.

"I had a guy over there on Warm Springs (Road), and I put 25 lines into his house," Sullivan said.

Waiting days or weeks for service is especially frustrating for new residents whose homes have telephone jacks installed but who still must wait weeks for a dial tone.

That's because it sometimes takes new equipment outside the home to make room for each new number in the valley's 17 central switching offices, Sprint officials said.

When there isn't room, they add a remote switching station such as the one Sullivan and his crew were installing early Wednesday in Henderson.

When it's up and running in about two weeks, the huge metal case stuffed with wires will make room for 1,200 new lines that will serve a new subdivision near Racetrack Road and Newport Drive.

"These folks won't have to wait," Sullivan said, waving his hand toward the construction site.

But residents of other new neighborhoods and apartment complexes are waiting, and Sullivan said he's frustrated about that because it's not always Sprint's problem.

Building contractors don't have to hire Sprint to install lines and conduit boxes, he said. They can install the equipment themselves and have Sprint inspect it.

Sullivan said contractors don't always call for the inspections before people move in, and problems aren't discovered until after residents request new service.

Sprint then sends workers to find the mechanical problems, and the contractor has to fix them before service can begin. That is how some of the unusually long delays occur, Sullivan said. "It aggravates me to death that they can build a $200,000 house and not get the box inspected," he said.

Southern Nevada is the only area in the Southwest where Sprint provides local land-line service, but it's not the only spot grappling with telephone problems, Sullivan said. He says he has heard about similar problems from employees of companies throughout the West's fastest-growing areas.

US West is spending $3.7 billion this year to add network space in high-growth areas such as Phoenix, Denver and Salt Lake City, according to Dave Beigie, spokesman for US West.

Despite the logical reasons for delays, Sprint customers aren't always so understanding. Last year, 145 of them lodged complaints with the state Public Utilities Commission, and 84 complained in 1997.

"Over the past couple of years, complaints have been escalating. People come into a cosmopolitan city like Las Vegas, and they have to wait for telephone lines," Rick Hackman, manager of the agency's consumer division, said.

As a result, the agency and Sprint officials in December worked out an agreement to improve service, Hackman said. Sprint officials vowed to spend $18 million by the end of last year to install new distribution and feeder lines in the valley's fastest-growing areas.

In designing services for new subdivsions, Sprint officials agreed to increase the average number of lines available for each home from 1.8 to three, Hackman said. They also said they would issue free cellular service to customers who had to wait for new service.

It seems to be working, Hackman said. The utilities agency received only 17 complaints in the first three months of this year.

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