AT&T is failing to provide fast Internet service to many customers and is doing a poor job maintaining old copper phone networks, mayors and other elected officials from California and Nevada said yesterday. The officials are taking the side of workers in a union’s ongoing labor dispute with AT&T, saying that the carrier has cut jobs while letting customers suffer long network outages.

“All too many Californians and Nevadans have waited far too long for AT&T to build the high-speed broadband infrastructure promised to them,” the officials said in a letter to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. “Not only is AT&T failing to provide access to 21st-century high-speed connections to many communities, but it is also not maintaining the copper lines that are vital to landline phone access, 911 and emergency services and basic Internet service.”