Campbell Holds AT&T Other Providers Accountable to Flood Victims; Demands Answers at Public Service Commission Meeting

At Wednesday's meeting of the Public Service Commission, Senate Candidate Foster Campbell renewed his charge to seek fair treatment for victims of recent flooding.

As waters were still rising, Campbell called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and telecom and utility providers to properly credit flood victim bills for outages, late fees, and extraordinary costs incurred because of flooding like data overages.

Campbell added an item to the agenda for the Commission meeting to discuss additional assistance to area customers.

"I don't want people making one penny of excess profit off this tragedy. I'm watching," said Campbell. "We're going to make this as broad as possible, to make sure we're covering any expense incurred as a result of flooding."

Campbell noted that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he was able to push the FCC to get about $39 million in telecommunications aid for victims. "We've done this before and we'll stay on top of it until it is completely taken care of."

AT&T customers were particularly hard hit during recent flooding, since cell service for their customers was completely out for days at a time. Campbell called representatives from telecom companies including AT&T to the table to testify on their plans to credit customers in the 20 parishes included in the federal government's disaster declaration at Wednesday's meeting.

Because of Campbell's efforts, carriers and utility companies including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and DEMCO have all come forward with customer credit plans for flood victims. The Commission will hear a technical briefing to hear from each provider on their plans going forward within a few weeks, date and time are to be determined.

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