Officials of FairPoint Communications reported losses for the fourth quarter and all of 2014, citing a lengthy strike and “extraordinarily bad weather” as primary reasons for the poor performance.

The North Carolina-based company, which operates the largest land-line telephone network in northern New England, said it lost $43.6 million in the final three months of 2014, compared to net income of $6.1 million during the same quarter in 2013.

The company said the loss was largely due to lower revenues, higher operating expenses and a lower income-tax benefit. It also spent roughly $51 million on legal expenses in the fourth quarter for work connected to the strike.

The company said its annual loss widened from $93.5 million in 2013 to $136.3 million in 2014.

Unions representing about 1,700 workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont went on strike against the company in October. The strike was settled last month and employees returned to work Feb. 25.

In its earnings release, the company focused on the final three months of the year and said the strike and bad weather were the primary reasons for the loss. FairPoint said it curtailed marketing in advance of the strike and thus saw requests for new service fall off, particularly in requests for new high-speed Internet service.

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In addition, installations required extra time, the company said, creating a backlog for connecting new services.

Those circumstances were reflected in Maine in a report to the Maine Public Utilities Commission filed in early February. In that report, FairPoint said there were 2,036 “network trouble reports,” or customer-reported service problems in October 2014. That figure increased 166 percent in November, when customers reported 5,417 service problems. In December, the number dropped slightly to 4,708.

The length of time in which FairPoint’s temporary workforce, which was brought in to replace the striking workers, was able to “clear” network problems also grew after the strike began. In November, more than 90 percent of problems were not fixed within 24 hours, and in December it was 86.71 percent. Those rates compare to 58.4 percent in October and 21.17 percent in October 2013.

In its quarterly report, FairPoint said the backlog for connecting new customers continued into 2015.

Revenues reflected a changing market. The company lost about 48,500 residential lines in 2014. Revenue decreased $11 million during the fourth quarter of 2014 to $217.1 million. Of that loss, $4.4 million occurred in voice services, primarily due to fewer lines in service, a drop in long-distance minutes and seasonality.


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