Two satellite dishes are mounted outside of Kitty Angerman's house at 7-Mile. The dish on the tree is no longer used, and the pole-mounted dish hasn't been able to receive Alaska network stations since DISH Network switched satellites in mid-January. Angerman and others have been trying to get their service restored since the channels were lost.
Options for television in Wrangell narrowed in mid-January when some DISH Network customers lost access to the Alaska affiliates for ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX when the provider switched satellites.
After two months of calls to the satellite TV provider and technicians, a solution might finally be on the way.
Kitty Angerman, who has been a DISH customer for more than 20 years, said when the channels disappeared from her menu she didn't think much of it because it's happened before. Unlike past instances, however, the channels didn't come back this time.
The satellite TV option has always been a better choice, Angerman said, since cable TV doesn't extend to her home out Zimovia Highway, and DISH prices fit her budget. The satellite service generally is less expensive than cable, depending on the channel lineup.
Angerman and others such as Curt and Jonna Kautz rely on the Alaska stations for their news and weather reports.
"Our biggest concern is, over the years, we've always had the local channels. You get your news that way," Jonna Kautz said. The frustration has led the Kautzes to consider an internet-based streaming service such as Roku or Amazon's Fire Stick. "With streaming, we just have to get more familiar with it. I'm not opposed to the streaming, it's just a new routine."
When Angerman first started calling DISH tech support, she spoke with a call center representative in another country. The person walked her through troubleshooting steps, but with no results. The system was working fine, the representative said.
Sometimes, specific channels will be blacked out due to stalled contract negotiations, but Ryan Vogler, senior corporate case manager with DISH in Denver said there were no "major issues impacting the channels in Wrangell. There are also no local channel takedowns that are impacting this area."
It was eventually determined that DISH had moved the channels from one satellite to another. If a customer moves their dish to realign with the satellite switch, they could possibly lose access to a lot of other channels.
"When you talk to DISH Network people, they don't know what's going on. You have to call (rural DISH contractor) Microcom in Juneau. When you call Microcom, it goes right back to a DISH recording right away," Angerman said.
When she did get through, she was told it would cost about $700 minimum to get a Microcom technician to Wrangell to assess the problem, and there are no guarantees of a fix.
"I did have a lot of calls in the beginning when it first started going out, but some of (the customers) backed out because they didn't want to risk paying for it and then not being able to have a guarantee," said Paige Coleman, customer service and technical support representative for Microcom.
Coleman said Microcom was unaware that DISH was moving the channels to a different satellite for Southeast, and Microcom doesn't have the technical capabilities to login remotely to customers' systems to make any fixes, making it necessary to send a technician to Wrangell. "I work with a lot of villages and many are hands on, doing (fixes) themselves. They're mostly self-installed."
That's not necessarily an option for customers who are elderly and not necessarily tech-savvy. However, Angerman said last Thursday that a Ketchikan-based technician that she and others in Wrangell had been in touch with was helping them find a solution.
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