[S]tate regulators have rejected a request by rural cellular relay service CoverageCo to order Vermont’s leading landline phone provider to restore internet service to the troubled company, saying the state lacks jurisdiction.
The ruling is likely the death knell for CoverageCo service in Vermont.
“This case involves an unfortunate situation that, at the moment, does not appear to have a solution within the commission’s ability to provide,” said the three-member panel’s ruling, issued Monday.
Consolidated Communications cut off service to CoverageCo on May 23, leaving areas of Vermont that had relied on the company without the ability to make emergency calls from a cellphone to 911, or to any other number.
At a Public Utility Commission hearing in late May, a lawyer for CoverageCo asked the commission for an emergency order telling Consolidated to restore service to CoverageCo. A Consolidated lawyer offered several counterarguments, chief among them — and the one that appeared to win the case for Consolidated — that federal law pre-empted such an order from state regulators.
The termination of service came after CoverageCo had racked up more than $100,000 in past-due bills to Consolidated, according to legal pleadings filed with the commission.
Jeffrey Austin, director of government affairs for Consolidated, said in an interview Tuesday that the company had grown frustrated after months of unfulfilled promises from CoverageCo that it would begin paying down its debt.
“We worked together for months getting to a certain point” in negotiations, Austin said. “They didn’t meet the commitments that were agreed upon.” He said Consolidated remained open to resuming negotiations with CoverageCo and would like to see it succeed.
A message left Tuesday for Richard Biby, CoverageCo’s interim CEO, was not immediately returned.
CoverageCo was seen as holding great promise when it arrived in Vermont in 2012, potentially offering an answer to Vermont’s perpetual problem of lacking cellular phone coverage in many areas.
The service was made up of “microcells,” receiver/transmitters along the state’s rural roadsides that would take cellular calls for carriers lacking coverage in that area and transmit those calls through the landline network to the systems maintained by AT&T, Verizon and other cellular carriers.
But CoverageCo struggled to make its business model work, with many of its microcells failing to get enough call traffic to pay each site’s costs. Those costs included the DSL service, first from FairPoint and then Consolidated, which bought FairPoint’s northern New England landline network last year, as well as payments to the state’s 911 emergency calling system and others.
In its order, the Public Utility Commission lamented the outcome. The Federal Communications Commission categorizes DSL internet service as an “information service,” the state commission said, meaning that, as a matter of federal law, it is outside the state commission’s jurisdiction.
The PUC said it was particularly bothered by the idea of cellular phone users not being able to complete 911 calls in some areas.
“We are troubled by the possibility of even a single person being delayed in contacting 911 in an emergency situation because CoverageCo can no longer provide the cell phone service it previously provided,” the commission’s order said.
