TDS provides post-disaster consumer protection measures for customers in California

TDS continues to experience outages in California due to recent storms. Check our outage page for updates.

As California residents continue recovering from recent storms, TDS Telecom (TDS®) will abide by several post-disaster consumer protection measures.

In the event the Governor of California or the President of the United States declare a state of emergency in your area that results in the loss or disruption of landline telephone service or in the degradation of the quality of landline telephone service, TDS shall provide the following protections to residential and small business customers* for a duration of at least 12 months from the date of the state of emergency declaration or as appropriately determined by the California Office of Emergency Services:

1.       Waiver of one-time activation fee for establishing remote call forwarding, remote access to call forwarding, call forwarding features, and messaging services;

2.       Waiver of the monthly rate for one month for remote call forwarding, remote access to call forwarding, call forwarding, call forwarding features, and messaging services;

3.       Waiver of the service charge for installation of service at the temporary or new permanent location of the customer and again when the customer moves back to the original premises;

4.       Waiver of the fee for one jack and associated wiring at the temporary location regardless of whether the customer has an Inside Wire Plan;

5.       Waiver of the fee for up to five free jacks and associated wiring for Inside Wiring Plan customer upon their return to their permanent location; and

6.       Waiver of the fee for one jack and associated wiring for non-Plan customers upon their return to their permanent location.

During a disaster situation, keep track of situational developments by listening to the news, authorities, and visiting websites like https://fire.ca.gov/incidents. Residents should also create a disaster preparedness plan so you’re ready if something happens.

For more information, please contact TDS at 1-888-CALL-TDS.

*Small business customers are considered businesses with five telephone lines or less.