PORTLAND, Maine — Maine telecommunications regulators want FairPoint Communications to pay a $500,000 fine for delivering below-standard service to landline customers who don’t necessarily make the company a profit.
Staff for the Maine Public Utilities Commission recommended the fine in a report Thursday. FairPoint will have an opportunity to dispute that report before the three-member commission issues a decision.
The case deals with a tough period of time for FairPoint, marked by the country’s largest and most-prolonged strike, which started in autumn 2014 and stretched into 2015.
Jordan McColman, the examiner in the case, wrote that the strike started more than two months after the expiration of the contract, which should have made clear the need to prepare for a possible strike.
The report suggests commissioners should not buy the argument that the strike was an unforeseeable event — in legalese, a force majeure — that would excuse FairPoint from meeting three different service quality standards.
“The possibility, indeed the probability, of a strike was clearly and concededly foreseen by FairPoint; poor planning and inept preparation do not transform an anticipated and controllable event into force majeure,” McColman wrote.
The report also dismisses FairPoint’s weather-related reasons for missing service benchmarks and statements that attacks on its internet network left it short-handed to deal with landline problems.
For most of Maine, the company is the default provider of landline service and it cannot turn down a customer request for a connection in those areas, even if that account won’t necessarily turn a profit. Regulators approve pricing for that regulated service, called provider-of-last-resort.
The report stated that FairPoint was apparently prioritizing its unregulated service, such as broadband, over taking a loss for missing benchmarks for its regulated landline customers.
“While providing high-quality broadband service is important to the company’s future, it cannot ignore service quality obligations to its [provider-of-last-resort] customers,” the report stated.
FairPoint argued that service quality metrics for those customers are unreasonable, but the examiner’s report urged commissioners to dismiss that argument as well.
“FairPoint’s only argument against the imposition of penalties for poor service quality appears to be the company’s disagreement with the Legislature’s establishment of service quality metrics, and the commission’s establishment of the service quality benchmarks,” the report states.
FairPoint did not respond to requests for comment on the examiner’s report, but it’s likely they’ll seek to use a legislative victory last year to their advantage.
Lawmakers agreed to relieve FairPoint of some of its provider-of-last-resort requirements and also to ease some of the related service quality metrics. That came after FairPoint made similar arguments to lawmakers, that the metrics for which it now faces penalties were impossible to meet.
Commissioners have previously stated that the quality metrics are attainable, in an order regarding the company’s 2015 service quality reports.
FairPoint and other parties have until Oct. 7 to file exceptions to the staff recommendation, which commissioners will deliberate and vote on at a later time.