Verizon Wireless tells some Delphi, Logansport customers: You can't hear us now

DELPHI, Ind. — Verizon Wireless is dropping customers in rural stretches of Greater Lafayette because they are using too much data on a partner’s network, all despite being on the carrier's highly touted unlimited-data plans.

The dropped customers include some who live in Delphi, Logansport and surrounding areas where Verizon allows customers to roam on towers operated by S&R Communications.

The partnership allows Verizon’s customers to roam on S&R towers while still having access to LTE data. But Verizon customers who live in that area and use a lot of data funneled through those towers are now being told they have less than a month before the company drops them.

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Verizon told the USA Today Network that it is cutting loose thousands of its customers in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere because it is losing money on them.

Some of those customers say that without Verizon, they'll have no cell service at all — losing a critical lifeline.

"In our remote area every minute counts in an emergency," Kaila Williams told the Great Falls Tribune in Montana. "Hospitals are a long distance from our homes. I understand that Verizon is a business and they are not making money, having our rural number in service. At some point ethics have to come into play."

Customers point out that Verizon's actions are counter to the company's aggressive marketing of its new unlimited-data plans. They say they signed up for unlimited plans and then got kicked off Verizon's network for using too much data.

The company says the majority of its users — such as those who live in Lafayette or West Lafayette and only occasionally roam on S&R towers while passing through Delphi or Logansport — are not affected by the cut-off.

Swayzee-based S&R is a collaboration of Swayzee Communications and Rochester Telephone Co. It owns towers in parts of Carroll, Cass, Fulton, Miami and Wabash counties.

S&R is one of 21 rural cell-service providers with whom Verizon partners to fill gaps in its own network.