A FairPoint service outage last week resulted in 45 emergency 911 calls not going through last Friday, and the Department of Public Service announced Monday it wants the company investigated for persistent service quality issues.
The department was already planning to call for the investigation, and the commissioner, Chris Recchia, said the outage “definitely did not help” FairPoint’s cause.
DPS is concerned that FairPoint is not meeting its baseline service standards dating back more than a year, according to a Sept. 4 letter to the company.
The company has not met to resolve customers’ service-related problems within 24 hours for the last five quarters, Recchia said.
Meanwhile service quality complaints have spiked since September, according to Recchia, from roughly 70 per month over the summer to 388 in the last two-and-a-half months.
FairPoint did not return calls or emails requesting comment for this report.
On Oct. 17, about 2,000 unionized FairPoint workers from the region walked off the job in protest of new terms of employment the company imposed in August after declaring an impasse in contract talks. Primary sticking points were pension plans, health care and the company’s desire to hire non-union contract workers.
For nearly six hours Friday, from roughly 3 p.m. until 8:45 p.m., weather-related damage to a FairPoint fiber line and the failure of the backup system resulted in a service outage that prevented approximately 45 outgoing 911 calls, according to state officials.
David Tucker, director of Vermont’s Enhanced 911 Board, said in a statement that too much time transpired before FairPoint provided the state with callback numbers for the failed 911 calls.
“It’s bad enough when there is any kind of outage to this critical safety system, but it is very concerning that our ability to respond to those callers who didn’t get through during the outage was delayed,” Tucker said in a press statement Saturday.
His staff planned to reach out “as quickly as possible” to the unsuccessful callers, and they hoped to know later Saturday whether there were any emergencies that were not responded to during the outage.
Tucker was unavailable Monday, and the board was unable to tell VTDigger how many of the 45 callers were reached or if there were emergencies where the outage impacted the response.
But at least one injury situation was exacerbated by the outage, according to Recchia, who said he did not have details on the incident.
Tucker has said he does not think the Friday outage can be attributed to the toll of striking workers on the company.
FairPoint was awarded the contract for Vermont’s E-911 system earlier this month. The company has nine months to implement its system and transition from the current provider, Intrado Inc., of Colorado.
FairPoint will be paid $1.8 million for the set-up, followed by a total of roughly $9.5 million for 60 months of operations and maintenance.
Friday’s outage was not a result of a failure within Intrado’s system, unlike an incident in August where the E-911 system went down for a brief period, according to Recchia.
The outage would have occurred regardless of who was operating the emergency phone system, he said, because the problem was with FairPoint’s supporting infrastructure.
The incident gives him pause going forward with FairPoint, Recchia said, adding that he raised concerns about hiring the company when the decision was made.
FairPoint was ultimately selected because it offered “a very competitive bid,” he said.
FairPoint’s bid came in about $2.5 million lower than those of its two competitors, according to Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding.
FairPoint was also the only bidder willing to commit to all of the state’s performance requirements, and the state felt secure with the contractual protections, Spaulding said.
DPS filed a petition with the Public Service Board Monday calling for an investigation into FairPoint’s service quality.
It had informed the company twice by letter in recent months that if the number of quality service complaints wasn’t reduced by November, the investigation request would be made to the board. (Those letters are included below.)
“The number of complaints we have received regarding FairPoint service outages and length of time for repair has remained unacceptably high for too many months, and spiked precipitously in the last two months,” Recchia said in a statement.
And while he said Monday that the 911 outage was not the straw that broke the camel’s back, the episode endangered public safety and is another example of FairPoint’s inadequate response to service problems, Recchia said.
The PSB will likely vote on whether to conduct the investigation before the end of the month, he said.
DPS letters to FairPoint:
