Every person who carries a cellphone or uses a landline in Maine could be affected if the nearly 2,000 FairPoint Communications workers who went on strike at midnight Thursday stay off the job more than a few months.
That’s because FairPoint owns and operates a large part of the state’s telecommunications infrastructure, including nearly 300,000 telephone poles, which it leases to carriers such as AT&T, Oxford Networks and GWI, among others.
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FairPoint Communications says the strike by its nearly 2,000 unionized employees in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont will not affect telephone service for its customers.
“We value every customer and it is important for them to know that we have comprehensive contingency plans in place to ensure the service they, and the economy and communities of Northern New England rely on continues without interruption,” FairPoint spokeswoman Angelynne Beaudry said in a statement.
Residential customers of FairPoint who need assistance should call (866) 984-2001. Business customers can call (866) 984-3001.
The potential for disruptions in service to Mainers beyond those who receive a monthly bill from FairPoint has raised concerns among Maine’s utility regulators, businesses and consumer advocates. While most agree there is no likelihood of short-term problems, the specter of a long strike and the possibility that telephone lines won’t receive routine maintenance over its duration have some worried.
“FairPoint’s network provides an essential backbone infrastructure to many other telecom providers in the state, so anything that could affect the performance of that network could have implications for those other providers,” Tim Schneider, Maine’s public advocate, said Friday.
The strike also has public safety implications because FairPoint maintains Maine’s new 911 system.
Schneider said his office is monitoring the situation closely and plans to meet with FairPoint representatives to learn more about the company’s plans for how they’re going to deal with storms and other situations that could threaten the viability of its network.
“We think it’s unlikely we’ll see immediate service quality issues, but what typically happens in situations like this is that over time, because the company is working with fewer workers and a replacement workforce, you may see lags in service,” Schneider said.
The company has put in place “comprehensive contingency plans” to ensure customers will be unaffected by the strike, according to FairPoint spokeswoman Angelynne Beaudry.
“We have a contingency workforce comprised of management, non-union employees and a qualified, experienced contract workforce to ensure continuity of service for our customers,” Beaudry said. “That workforce began mobilizing last night, and we’re executing our contingency plans as we speak.”
ON THE PICKET LINE
FairPoint and its unions – the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents 1,700 FairPoint workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, and the Communication Workers of America, which represents nearly 300 workers in the three states – began negotiating a new labor contract in April but failed to reach a deal.
Union leaders said the strike is necessary because the company is unwilling to back off its demand for more than $700 million in contract concessions. Picket lines were formed Friday morning at company facilities throughout the state.
Workers say they are most worried about a FairPoint proposal that would allow it to outsource work to lower-paid, non-union workers who live out of state.
“They want to outsource all our work,” said Kristen Profenno, a dispatcher who lives in Windham.
A single mother, she earns enough to pay a mortgage and support her family. “Without this job, that would be impossible,” she said.
If she loses her job, Profenno fears she’ll be unable to find other work that pays as well. The company says it spends $115,000 a year per worker on wages and benefits.
The picket lines drew some politicians, including U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who joined the workers in a show of solidarity Friday morning.
FairPoint has offered landline telephone and Internet service to customers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont since 2008, when it bought Verizon’s landline business in northern New England for $2.3 billion. It has struggled financially ever since, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 and emerging two years later.
Matt Hayes of Windham, who works as a service technician for FairPoint and is a shop steward for IBEW Local 2327, said workers continued to service customers and worked to keep the company intact during the bankruptcy process.
“We worked diligently those years to keep them afloat. As payment, this is how we are treated,” he said. “The workforce carried this company through the bankruptcy and made it successful on the other side.”
THE IMPACT ON CUSTOMERS
FairPoint will not disclose the number of customers it has in Maine. However, it does report to the Maine Public Utilities Commission the number of access lines it maintains, which offers a rough idea of how many landline customers it has, although one customer could have multiple lines. In 2012, the company had 290,000 access lines serving customers in Maine, according to the PUC.
Those customers are located throughout the state, including rural areas that lack a robust telecommunications infrastructure. Schneider, Maine’s public advocate, worries that those customers could be affected most if the strike drags on.
“In a situation like this, the company is going to have to prioritize where they devote their limited staff resources and we assume that they’ll prioritize the services that are most important to them,” Schneider said.
From the company’s point of view, the most important services are the ones that provide revenue, such as leasing its network to cellphone carriers like Verizon Wireless, and Maine’s 911 system. At the bottom of that priority list will be residential customers in remote areas, Schneider predicts. If a storm were to disrupt service, the remote customers at the end of the road could wait longer than usual to regain telephone service.
“People rely on these services and it’s not acceptable that the company’s labor dispute could put people at risk,” Schneider said.
FairPoint does have a regulatory obligation to report service quality data to the PUC, including the number of service outages and missed customer appointments. But those reports are made quarterly, so any service disruptions that reflect the impacts of the strike wouldn’t be expected until January, according to Tom Welch, chairman of the PUC.
Ben Sanborn, executive director for the Telephone Association of Maine, agrees with Schneider that short-term impact on service is unlikely. But problems could crop up if the strike drags on, said Sanborn, whose association represents many telecommunication carriers in the state.
“I think if the strike goes on for a couple months it becomes a concern because routine maintenance might start to falter,” Sanborn said.
Other carriers could be affected because of the shared structure of Maine’s telecommunications network. All telecom companies are interconnected and utilize one another, according to Craig Gunderson, CEO of Oxford Networks, a Lewiston-based telecom company, but some carriers will be more susceptible to service issues than others.
Because Oxford Networks has its own network and a fiber backbone that extends from Bangor to Boston, it will be impacted less than a company that relies more heavily on FairPoint’s infrastructure.
“It is less likely to impact the existing infrastructure that’s working today,” Gunderson said. “Where it has a possible impact is on customers wanting to add new services or make some kind of change.”
Even cellphone service is vulnerable. Contrary to what many assume, cellphone calls are not entirely wireless. So, for instance, if someone in Penobscot County used a cellphone to call a friend’s cellphone in California, the call would be directed from the Maine caller’s phone to the nearest cell tower, then run along telephone lines, likely crossing FairPoint’s network on its way out of the state, until it reaches a cell tower in California. There it would resume its wireless existence and be delivered to the California receiver’s phone.
“(FairPoint’s) backbone is extensive,” Sanborn said. “It connects all towns and locations and pulls everything back down to Portland and out of state.”
MAINE’S 911 SYSTEM
FairPoint received a $32 million award in May 2013 from the Maine Public Utilities Commission’s Emergency Services Communication Bureau to build and maintain an Internet Protocol-based 911 system that is capable of handling phone calls, as well as text and video communication between emergency dispatchers throughout the state.
When contract negotiations between FairPoint and its unions began to stall and the specter of a strike loomed, the PUC’s Emergency Services Communication Bureau talked to FairPoint about contingency plans. Welch, the PUC chairman, said the commission was satisfied with the company’s plan to ensure knowledgeable people with expertise would be available to maintain the network per the FairPoint contract.
Even so, the PUC plans to remain vigilant.
“We will continue to monitor the performance under the contract and ensure there’s no compromise to the integrity of the new 911 system or compromise to public safety,” Welch said.
Staff Writer Tom Bell contributed to this report
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