Evie Eisenhard, an Ashby Ponds resident, said she and her husband had no telephone service for 10 days after the station began broadcasting. When Eisenhard contacted Verizon, she was told there was nothing the company could do, she said.
But after the community complained to Loudoun officials and the Federal Communications Commission, Verizon agreed to address the problem, she said.
“I would make a phone call and could barely get even a few words out. The person on the other end would say ‘I can’t hear you; turn your radio down,’ ” she said. “It was absolutely impossible to make a normal telephone call.”
Especially in a community that houses senior citizens, such disruptions could be a safety hazard if someone needed to call 911, Eisenhard said.
Sandra Arnette, a Verizon spokeswoman, declined to estimate the number of customers in Ashburn who might be affected but said that the neighborhoods affected are “within eyesight” of the station’s towers and therefore more susceptible to the higher-frequency signal.
“It’s my understanding that this power boost affected phone service to some Verizon customers in Ashburn and impacted service to customers of other phone providers — as well as various communications devices like inside two-way radios,” Arnette wrote in an e-mail.
A spokesman for Comcast Communications said Comcast customers in the area were not affected by the radio signal. Verizon said Friday that it was continuing to dispatch technicians to address the problem.
“Different technical solutions are required, based on the customers’ inside wiring, which can act as an antenna for the AM signals,” Arnette said. Correcting the problem is often labor-intensive, but technicians would continue to respond to customers who reported problems, she said.
Eisenhard said a technician from Verizon came to her apartment Wednesday evening.
“It was a huge relief to have the phone working again,” she said.
But residents at the Four Seasons in Ashburn were not relieved: As of Friday, they said, they were still hearing WCRW’s broadcast at varying volume levels during phone calls.
John Lupinski, who lives in the Four Seasons community with his wife, had to speak loudly as he described the issue during a phone interview; a news broadcast was playing in the background.
“This isn’t as loud as it has been,” he said. “There have been times where it’s louder than your own voice. It’s a nuisance.”
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