Letter to the editor: Who answers when your phone company leaves?

In Montana, some ranching families are hours from the nearest town. Their phone line isn't a convenience — it's their connection to emergency services. But Montana has no law requiring anyone to keep it working.

There is a policy called Carrier of Last Resort, the rule that someone has to provide phone service to every address. Montana has never had a formal COLR law, and House Bill 45, signed last year, removed many of the remaining protections. If your phone company decides your area is not worth serving, there is no state requirement that anyone replace them.

The communities left behind are the ones that can least afford it: elderly residents on medical alert systems, rural families miles from the nearest cell tower, households where a landline is their only connection to 911.

We're ClearBeam Networks, and we're filing with the Montana Public Utilities Commission to serve here. We're coming to be your neighbors.

When we become your phone company, we answer to your state regulators and your consumer protection laws. We become accountable to Montana, same as anyone else who lives and works here. That's the deal.

It's time for Montana to revisit this. Every community deserves to know someone will answer when they pick up the phone.

Neighbors take care of neighbors. That's how phone service is supposed to work.

Tim Semakula, 

Co-founder, ClearBeam Networks Montana