Connecticut AG Blumenthal Resumes Attack on AT&T Repair Performance
AT&T should be fined for ignoring three orders by the Connecticut utility regulator since June to explain why it has failed since 2001 to meet state phone repair requirements and submit a compliance plan, said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Consumer Counsel Mary Healey. Communications Workers of America Local 1298 agreed. But AT&T stands by its performance, a company spokesman told us.
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Connecticut’s Department of Utility Control found in June that AT&T has failed since 2001 to obey a state mandate that carriers fix 90 percent of out of service phones within 24 hours and ordered the company to submit an explanation and a compliance timetable. “AT&T has since failed to comply with three DPUC orders to do so -- seeking at times to blame its noncompliance on the weather,” Blumenthal said in a written statement. The company said Feb. 15 that it would take no further steps “until the out of service standard is eliminated or modified,” he said.
“AT&T’s shameful stonewalling demands a stinging rebuke -- a serious message-sending fine,” said Blumenthal, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate: “This company is thumbing its nose at the state and consumers, brazenly defying the law and its public safety duty. Now is lesson time: Disregard safety standards and you will pay a painful penalty.”
Blumenthal said “the company’s inexcusable, longstanding failure to meet repair requirements -- more than 90 straight months and counting -- coincides with phone repair force reductions, from 1,089 to 569. AT&T is apparently boosting its profits at the expense of much-needed jobs and public safety.”
“Legal filings may make good politics but they don’t help create jobs in Connecticut,” said AT&T spokesman Chuck Coursey. “The fact is the DPUC has specifically examined and rejected previous claims by the Attorney General that AT&T’s performance on the out of service metric was related in any way to it’s staffing. AT&T has complied with all DPUC orders and provides excellent service to our customers. The competitive market demands we do no less.”
“Connecticut consumers have endured AT&T’s substandard repair times for far too long,” Healy said. “The company provides no good reason for its nine-year failure to meet the regulatory standard for repairing outages. … As a public service company, it is AT&T’s core responsibility to provide reliable service and perform repairs expeditiously.”
AT&T can afford to provide service that meets the standard, Healy said. “AT&T has approximately 1.3 million access lines in Connecticut and it earns an astounding return on its investment here,” she said. “For 2007 and 2008, the two most recent reported years, its annual return on average equity was approximately 29 percent. In those two years, AT&T-Connecticut paid its corporate parent dividends of $322.5 million. Plus, the company paid $122 million in royalty fees to an out-of-state affiliate.” To compel action by AT&T, the department should fine the company on a scale that increases with each day of continued noncompliance, Healey said.
CWA Local 1298 President William Henderson said AT&T hasn’t “even come close to meeting the standard continuously every month for the last seven years, thus ignoring the law.” He said that’s come at the expense of Connecticut subscribers “who depend on their phone system to be the best system possible.”