FairPoint customers blanked
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By Bruce Edwards STAFF WRITER - Published: June 9, 2009
As yet another sign of its ongoing problems, about 12,000 of FairPoint Communications customers in Vermont lost Internet service Monday.
FairPoint's Internet service in parts of the state went down at 2:50 p.m. The outage affected both high-speed and dial-up customers. A recorded message on the company's technical support line said there was no estimated time when service would be restored and advised customers to call back for an update.
Shortly before 10:30 p.m., service was restored to about 12,000 customers, according to Fairpoint spokeswoman Beth Fastiggi.
"We do have an issue that is affecting some customers in Vermont. However, it is not impacting all FairPoint Internet customers in the state," Fastiggi said in an e-mail late Monday afternoon.
Fastiggi confirmed that the outage was isolated to parts of Vermont and was related to a hardware issue. She said Maine and New Hampshire customers were not affected.
Stephen Wark, a spokesman with the state Department of Public Service, said the department received phone calls Monday from customers who lost service.
"The basic information we have is that it's probably under 12,000 customers but other than that we don't know exactly how many or what areas are particularly affected," Wark said. "We do know FairPoint has said they're working on the problem."
Fastiggi said the number of customers who lost service represent a minority of the company's Internet customers in the state.
FairPoint has had ongoing problems with service in the three northern New England states since switching to its own systems from the Verizon network in January.
Wark said FairPoint's service issues in Vermont remain a concern.
"Essentially FairPoint is suffering from difficulties in the market that have made it difficult for them to keep up with their promises," he said. "Nonetheless, Vermont consumers deserve to have quality service and we're going to continue to fight to make sure that they get decent quality telecommunications."
As the incumbent telecommunications provider in the state, Wark said FairPoint "needs to start acting like it."
bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com
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