California Legislators ‘Disappointed’ With Frontier, CPUC

“We are very carefully working the backlog as quickly as we can,” White said. About 200 customers still don’t have working VoIP, she said. Frontier has been sending more technicians to particularly bad areas, she said. White predicted it won’t be until mid-June that Frontier achieves full system resolution, including of VOD problems like failure to transfer customer video purchases from Verizon. Frontier also is experiencing transition trouble in Texas and Florida, the other two states in the Verizon deal (see 1605090043).

Before the transition began, Frontier had 16,000 backlogged customer service orders dating back to Verizon ownership, White said. When Frontier discovered it couldn’t communicate with network terminals, she said, “that made the 16,000-plus [backlog] seem less than manageable.” There was corrupt data in some of the 200 million data extracts about Verizon customers in California, she said. Some serial numbers for optical network terminals and set top boxes were missing or inaccurate, she said. There were customer support problems after Frontier sent ex-Verizon employees to training on day one, and to fill in for the employees being trained added more than 5,300 call center representatives -- both onshore and offshore. The offshore workers were the same ones used by Verizon. “They were trained on our products and systems, yes, but they were not prepared or trained for the kind of technical issues that customers were calling in for,” White said. Some representatives didn't enter trouble tickets for customers needing support, she said. Frontier plans to have a 100 percent U.S.-based staff again by the end of July, she said.

Frontier shouldn’t have done a flash cutover, said Assemblyman Jay Obernolte (R). “These problems with the corrupted data extracts -- certainly if you had cut over just a portion of the network, it would have been discovered that that was going to be an issue.” Six years ago, when Frontier bought Verizon assets in 14 states, it was a three-year migration, but that had a “different kind of pain,” said White. “Whatever we had decided, whether it was a three-year or a three-day or a 30-minute transaction, the fact is that we would only have been able to see so far into the network … until day one.” That may be true, said Obernolte, but “you would have had the capacity to deal with that because it wouldn’t have overwhelmed your customer support options as it did.”

Long Beach suffered an especially large number of problems, acknowledged White, estimating the area had 1,500 conversion-related problems. The area’s representative, Patrick O’Donnell (D), said he believes there were many more. Obernolte also doubted Frontier’s estimates, citing hundreds of complaints received by his office. “If one constituent is calling the office, it means that at least 10 and probably several hundred constituents are having the same problem and not calling,” he said.

Executive Director Tim Sullivan said the CPUC received 584 complaints about the transaction in April and 283 in the first week of May. The commission usually gets about 130 complaints monthly about Verizon, he said. The enforcement division will decide whether to file its own complaint or seek sanctions, he said. Or the commission may open an investigation or reopen the merger proceeding, he said.

“We are sincerely sorry for the disruption,” White said. "This is certainly not the way we meant to introduce ourselves to California.” Frontier will make up for it in part by sending billing credits to customers who suffered outages, she said. Gatto said that may not be enough. “If you’re a restaurant who lost a number of days of processing credit cards … a bill credit might be 20 bucks, but it might not accurately compensate” for lost business, he said.

CPUC Slammed

“I’m disappointed with our regulatory agency,” said Gatto. Frontier faced similar problems after acquiring other wireline businesses, but the CPUC didn’t account for it, he said. “It’s sounds to me that our regulatory agency did not learn from those mistakes made in other states.”

The CPUC executive director blamed the commission’s shrunken authority over telecom. “The commission has very little authority over VoIP telecommunications service, it has virtually no authority over Internet, and has very limited authority over video services,” said Sullivan. Plain old telephone service, for which CPUC has the most authority, experienced the least problems in transition, he said. The problems cited by Frontier had to do with IP-based networks, he said. “That is the one area where the legislation has both reduced our authority and [for] which the authority’s uncertain because of our relationship with the FCC.”

“There is very little authority left to the states to regulate advanced communications services because of the shifting technology that has moved to digital services,” said Sullivan: Frontier could have told CPUC it has no authority, but the company has “worked with us to restore the services.” Gatto said the CPUC had deal review authority. “You could have placed conditions in terms of the number of customer service representatives available,” he said. Sullivan said the CPUC considered and addressed issues.

California might need to rethink telecom oversight, Gatto said. “Does this just underscore the need to maybe separate some of the regulatory duties in the state of California and to maybe give them to the Department of Consumer Affairs or somebody who is more adept with daily interactions with consumers to help consumers find justice, as opposed to an agency that is tasked with overseeing everything from gas pipelines to hot air balloons?”

“If you can’t help in a situation that affects public utilities, then why should we keep you around?” Republican Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez asked Sullivan. Gatto added that “your core function is assessing how to protect consumers in the state of California. Without that, what is there?”