SubscribeThe price of providing lousy telephone and broadband Internet service in three New England states? $2.8 million dollars in fines, and counting.
FairPoint Communications has been piling up fines and penalties for almost a year now, providing third world phone service with the competitive spirit of Hugo Chavez. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont officials started fining the company after it blasted FairPoint’s “failure to meet certain standards for quality and timeliness of interconnections.” FairPoint is required by law to open its networks to local competitors, and the results of those trying to purchase access at wholesale rates have been about as acceptable as those residential customers have dealt with since Verizon threw them under the bus and left town more than a year ago.
The company’s response? It wants Maine’s Public Utilities Commission, for one, to waive the $845,000 it owes to local phone carriers. In a filing with the PUC, it asks that waiving or modifying the payments will let it return its focus to fixing faulty networks to normal operating levels.
In other words, it was penalized for not doing its job and promises, if the penalties go away, it will do its job. What happens if the penalties don’t go away?
FairPoint’s plans for broadband expansion in its service area were called into question when the company announced it has the potential to go bankrupt if bondholders don’t agree to waive certain payment requirements.
Im trying to figure this out it was said on this site fairpoint could go under by the end of the year (I trust STC because they look at dirt under the rug and I have no problem with trust) so those states continue to insure that prophesy will come true. That could mean even no phone service. Drive them deep enough underground and maybe years later in courts it may get resolved. Get over it Verizon is out of the picture there and you will live with what you local governments decided on in your best interest and how… Read more »