Zito Media, a television and internet services company, has responded to accusations of poor service in Perry County by saying many problems are due to ongoing upgrades of its technology.
The company from Coudersport is a bidder on the county’s project to expand broadband internet infrastructure. Executives said the problems some residents have experienced are not an indication of the quality it would provide in fiber optic service.
“We’ve been doing work to fix the issues and improve the system,” said Mark VanOuse, commercial sales executive for Zito Business.
VanOuse in late January visited the county commissioners to give a progress report on what the company is doing to improve service as complaints about failing internet and poor customer service mounted among Perry residents.
Most of the internet glitches and disruptions are due to the process of Zito upgrading its existing facilities in the county and region, as well as due to heavy use of the service by residents, he said.
“We made some aggressive improvements,” VanOuse said.
Heavy utilization problems can be thought of as a congested highway at rush hour. The road may be adequate, but it doesn’t have enough lanes to accommodate the number of cars and so everything slows down. The company is splitting nodes, the places where coaxial cable ties to fiber optic lines, so there are fewer customers on each node. That reduces problems. It’s also upgrading other servers and connecting technology.
Zito is one of two companies that bid on Perry County’s broadband expansion. The other is a wireless internet service firm called Upward Broadband of Lancaster. Both companies are waiting for the county to make a decision on how it will use federal money to build new internet infrastructure. The county slowed the process because there could be more money and additional companies looking at expanding internet here. It’s looking at all available avenues.
Zito has regularly contacted the county to keep it abreast of its fixes, upgrades and improvements, said Commissioner Brenda Watson. She’s leading the county’s broadband expansion project because she has experience with communication companies through her survey and engineering firm NavTech.
“I know they’re making progress,” Watson said of Zito’s effort to upgrade. “It could be one piece of the puzzle.”
When the commissioners last year put out a request for proposals (RFP) on broadband internet, it received only three. One was rejected because the company didn’t follow the specifications in the RFP. The county agreed to discuss the proposals from Zito and Upward, but it has not yet given contracts to either company.
Upward is a new company to the county, but Zito acquired Nittany Media in the past and now owns the existing cable and fiber optic lines in Perry County.
VanOuse, who formerly worked with Nittany, said the company’s former owners always had big plans to improve their infrastructure, but just didn’t have the money to do so because it was a small company. Zito’s acquisition made those upgrades possible, and it continues to work through that as well as address customer service complaints.
“Anyone in the industry who does an acquisition is faced with these issues,” he said.
He noted communication companies are not immune to the same problems others have faced since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, including shutdowns, illnesses, worker shortages, and financial concerns.
Additionally, VanOuse said Zito’s cable television/video side is separate from its commercial internet business.
That’s not a comfort to former Nittany/Zito customers such as Stanley Good, a retired computer technician in the Liverpool area. He has been having problems with the company since July, when his cable went out, and he was told he needed to upgrade. The company allegedly said a technician would be out to fix his problems.
“I was promised that two times before, and they never show up,” Good said.
Another customer service person allegedly told him the company was getting out of cable in his area, he said. Nothing was ever explained prior to him losing service, and he has lodged complaints with the state Bureau of Consumer Protection. That operates out of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office.
He also searched for complaints with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a business ratings and consulting company.
Good said through those discussions, he learned he wasn’t the only person with complaints about Zito. There were 100s of complaints in BBB’s public database online. The complaints include responses from the company, and many that were fixed.
Good said his problem was never fixed, but the company continued to charge him for cable service he wasn’t getting. He had internet through CenturyLink.
Good also sent emails to the county commissioners to relay his concerns about Zito.
“In my opinion, that company should never be used in Pennsylvania or be given public contracts,” he said.
VanOuse said the company is in the process of migrating customers from older cable service to new internet protocol television, or IPTV, which streams from the internet. That helps to reduce the bandwidth used for television and allows for both it and internet service to be sped up and improved. Some of the equipment Zito is replacing dates back to the late 1970s.
Watson said the county does take the concerns of residents serious and have asked companies to explain their problems. The county isn’t going to dismiss resident concerns, but it also can’t dismiss the companies outright either. Especially if they are making improvements.
“Right now, my priority is getting as much into broadband as I can,” she said.
That means keeping all options on the table because the county is likely to coordinate with multiple companies to expand internet to underserved parts of the county. Watson also said the county is organizing a committee to manage the project. It’s too big for one person to manage, she said.
Watson had a meeting Feb. 15 with an internet cooperative between several western Pennsylvania municipalities to hear about how they worked on a similar project in the past. Getting their input will help Perry County to better build its project.
“They’ve already done this,” Watson said. “They’re not re-inventing the wheel.”
Jim T. Ryan can be reached via email at jtryan@perrycountytimes.com
This story has changed from its print version to correct Mr. Good’s place of residence, as well as where he lodged his complaints. He did not lodge complaints with the Better Business Bureau.