On a recent morning, Janis Flippen called her service provider, Verizon Communications Inc., when her business voice mail went down.

The operator said there was an outage but assured Flippen, who runs a Camarillo-based public relations firm, that service would be restored by 6 p.m.

The outage lasted for more than half the work week.

It started on a Tuesday evening. More than 72 hours later, on Feb. 8, customers like Flippen were growing more and more frustrated before it was finally restored.

"One day is one thing, but after three days it's ridiculous," Bettina Behal, a financial consultant for Santa Barbara Bank & Trust said. The system's failure rocked a number of businesses. Verizon reported that about 740,000 land-line customers in California were affected.

On Monday, there was another massive communication breakdown: BlackBerry e-mail service went down across North America for about three hours.

Experts say such communication crashes underscore the need for regulation. Consumers are voicing concern about the potential for a massive unforeseen breakdown that could have serious ramifications, especially for people working in the healthcare industry.

"What the system is crying out for is regulation," said Harvey Rosenfield, founder of The Foundation For Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica.

"The companies are deregulated," he said, "and in order to get them to pay you for the business that you lost, you have to sue them."

Currently, there is no regulation in place that is applicable to such service failures, according to a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission, who spoke only on background without addressing the consumer rights group's concerns.

It's a void that needs to be filled, according to Rosenfield, who questions the wisdom of a digitized nation relying on laws designed to protect hard-line systems, such as the Federal Communications Act of 1934, which was amended in 1996 to reduce regulation and enhance competition.

During the Verizon outage, customers complained that they lost business, that the company didn't do enough to publicize the outage, and that it was difficult to get answers.

Their recourse is limited, said Rosenfield, who is also an attorney. The first hurdle is that they're likely bound by the fine print in their service contracts, which often requires that they arbitrate their disputes outside the courts.

Verizon spokesman Jon Davies said the company's customers are not bound to arbitration.

Verizon's follow-up after its outage consisted of broadcasting recorded voice mail apology messages to customers, and offering $5 credits for lost residential service and $15 for lost business service.

Flippen said she wasn't sure how much she lost in terms of goodwill. There were clients who left three-days worth of messages but didn't hear back from her.

"Unfortunately, it reflected on me professionally," she said.

The credits, she said, seem like an easy way for Verizon to wash its hands of the mess.

"I would like to see more regulation," Flippen said. "Maybe there's a procedure or a rule book to go by when something like this happens. A plan. I don't think they had a plan in place."

As of Thursday, Verizon still had no response when asked what specifically caused the outage.