FairPoint Asks Vermont PSB to Relax Reporting Rules
FairPoint Communications need report service quality only in locations with no voice competition, the phone company told the Vermont Public Service Board. In testimony Thursday in docket 8701, FairPoint Vermont State President Beth Fastiggi said competition increased significantly since service-quality…
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rules were set. "In the context of adoption of the metrics, service quality regulation was a proxy for competition, giving the [ILEC] an incentive to provide quality service to its customers in the absence of customer choice,” she said. “Those days are long past us now." FairPoint "has -- like all ILECs nationwide -- seen its telephone lines in service decrease dramatically as a result of changing technology and competition, including cable voice service, other broadband provided [VoIP] service, and wireless voice service,” she said. Over the past seven years in Vermont, FairPoint access lines fell 53 percent to about 136,100, she said. Meanwhile, the cost of providing rural voice service is much higher than revenue received for the service, she said. Fastiggi proposed the board annually review competition at specific locations, using buildings by E-911 address within 300 feet of any plant capable of providing wireline voice service, including cable and fiber. Fastiggi also urged the board to double the amount of time given to FairPoint to address service issues. The current metric requires the telco to make repairs in 24 hours, a goal that the carrier hasn’t met for two of the past four quarters. The 24-hour metric "is not a meaningful or realistic measure of customer satisfaction, and yet for many years both FairPoint and its predecessor [Verizon] have struggled to meet it with any consistency," Fastiggi said. "With respect to reported troubles, customers, in our experience, want us there when we say we will be there -- they want us to schedule appointments with them within a reasonable time period and then keep our appointments." FairPoint bases appointment times on its current load, prioritizing homeland security issues, customers with medical needs and wholesale customers, she said. She proposed changing the measure to “Cleared in 48” hours, as used in Maine. That metric “would keep an express, objective period of time in place while at least providing the company with some additional flexibility in scheduling repairs," she said, "and a more meaningful opportunity to meet the regulatory commitment consistently while also completing all other work.”