Desert Residents Ring Up Victory in Phone Battle

Beginning this Saturday, four residents of a small desert border town will get the phone service they have been denied for the past 10 months, thanks to a settlement of their federal lawsuit against Nevada Bell.

And another 39 residents and businesses in communication-starved Sandy Valley, Calif. will get phone service beginning Feb. 15, provided by Pacific Bell under the complicated legal settlement.

“We’re ecstatic,” said Marilyn Gubler, one of four Sandy Valley residents who filed suit against Nevada Bell after the utility refused to hook up new customers beginning last January. “We don’t have service yet, but it appears imminent. And when we do, you’ll be able to hear the rejoicing from Sandy Valley all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”

Nevada Bell spokeswoman Jennifer Whitty said there were no losers in the settlement.

“Basically, everybody wins,” she said. “Finally, the people in Sandy Valley can begin using their telephones again.”

For years, Nevada Bell provided service to the 80 California residents of Sandy Valley, a town of more than 4,000 people that is split by the California-Nevada border. But in January, the phone company changed that policy, refusing to offer phones to new residents on the California side of the isolated Mojave Desert community, located about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

The company said it has no legal authority to install phones across state lines, and that phones installed in the past were the result of “mistakes.”

The group of residents filed suit in May in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, seeking to require Nevada Bell to provide new service to the 43 homes and businesses that had requested it this year.

For years, Sandy Valley residents said, the California Public Utilities Commission had failed to grant Pacific Bell legal authority to provide them service. “In the meantime, we were content getting the service from Nevada Bell,” Gubler said. “As long as we got phone service.”

Seeking to prevent what critics claimed would have been a public relations fiasco, Nevada Bell in September began phone service for an ailing 85-year-old grandmother, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Under the terms of the agreement, signed Oct. 29, the community’s phone service will be provided by Pacific Bell, if it receives approval from state regulators.

On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission will consider a resolution to grant Pacific Bell legal authority to supply the service.