FairPoint Urges Maine PUC to Excuse Service Quality Failures
The Maine Public Utilities Commission shouldn’t fine FairPoint for failing to meet service quality benchmarks from Q3 2014 to Q2 2016, said FairPoint Maine President Michael Reed. If the commission imposes fines, they should be minimal in amount and based…
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only on provider-of-last-resort revenue, he said in Friday testimony in docket 2014-00376. The PUC in October proposed $500,000 in civil penalties for service quality violations (see 1610170011). Reed blamed service-quality failures on reasons out of FairPoint’s control. The telco still would have missed benchmarks for network troubles not cleared in 24 hours and installation appointments not met due to company reasons “even during normal operating conditions due to how the benchmarks for those metrics were derived during the rulemaking process,” he said. “Taking into consideration the cyber-attacks, labor strike and extreme winter weather, performance under those benchmarks worsened, and also resulted in [FairPoint] not meeting the Average Delay Days For Missed Appointments and Network Trouble Report Rate for the four quarters of 2015." FairPoint last month promised better service if regulators approve its acquisition by Consolidated Communications (see 1612210016).