The Public Service Board, which regulates utilities, opened the investigation in response to a September request from the Public Service Department, which advocates for the ratepayers.
The department already hired an independent expert to investigate one part of FairPoint’s landline phone network — called SS7 — in 2015 following an outage in 2014. The new investigation seeks to hire a similar expert to investigate a separate part of the network.
At a hearing Thursday, the department said it is moving forward with hiring an independent expert to investigate the network. Specifically, the department wants to know whether a phone system outage on Jan. 5, 2016 indicates major systemic problems in FairPoint’s phone system.
Paul Phillips, a Burlington lawyer representing FairPoint, said at the hearing the company is allowing the expert to have access to the 911 system. He also said the company is cooperating with a separate inquiry from the Enhanced 911 Board, which is separate from the Public Service Department.
That inquiry addresses an outage in June when the 911 system missed 44 phone calls, and an outage in August that caused FairPoint to shut down the text-to-911 system. The E-911 Board awarded FairPoint an $11.2 million contract to set up the 911 system in summer 2015.
In addition to the state requests, the Public Service Board has also opened a separate investigation at the request of two telecommunications advocates, Charles Larkin and Stephen Whitaker.
The advocates are seeking to have a broad range of issues investigated. At a separate hearing on Thursday, representatives for telecommunications companies such as FairPoint and Comcast, fought the investigation.
Whitaker said he might seek to combine his investigation with the Public Service Department’s.
