Hot 97 blames Verizon for outages

[Keith Berman <RockTheGlobe@rcn.com>]

According to an article in today's Boston Globe (which I couldn't find on
their web site to link to, otherwise I would've just posted it instead of
summarizing), WBOT said that they were off the air for 14 hours last
Wednesday because of problems with Verizon.  Apparently, their T1 line
between the studio and transmitter has been cutting out frequently,
resulting in "frequent gaps in the signal [that] break up the transmission
for one or two seconds up to four or five times a day."  WBOT says that
problems with the T1 is also the reason why they were off the air for a
chunk of a day over the Labor Day Weekend.

The station wants to use an ISDN line for a backup, which they said should
have been operational on Monday but wasn't.

The station's engineer, Grady Moates, also slammed Verizon for not
responding to the repair call quickly enough, saying "If this had been WBZ,
it wouldn't have taken 14 hours to fix.  It's too much trouble for them to
care."