New Hampshire Considers Retail Regulatory Changes
The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission is working with the state legislature on appropriate retail regulations for phone companies, said Katherine Bailey, telecom director with the agency. Among the issues under consideration is regulatory treatment for ILECs like FairPoint, which had service quality issues after it took over Verizon’s northern New England landlines in 2009, she told us. The company, which claimed it had made progress improving service quality, is asking regulators and legislators in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont to relax ILEC regulation, officials said.
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Retail rate regulation may no longer be necessary, but policy makers should carefully define what deregulation means, Bailey said. Some questions under consideration include if ILECs should maintain carrier-of-last-resort responsibility and be required to maintain a stand-alone basic service, according to Bailey. Regarding FairPoint, which had made promises like expanding broadband to gain approval for the Verizon line transfer, a question is if those promises should be kept, she said. Other questions include if there should be any oversight of mergers, acquisitions or transfer of assets and provisions for low-income customers, Bailey said. Also under discussion is whether there should be a price limit in areas where there’s no competitive alternative and whether there should be a restriction against selling the same service at a lower price to retail customers than wholesale competitors, she said.
FairPoint claimed the regulatory environment in New Hampshire isn’t a level playing field. The company is working with the legislature, not in session until January 2012, to seek regulatory relief, said Pat McHugh, the company’s interim New Hampshire state president. It’s too early to discuss details of the proposal, he said. Many regulatory requirements that apply to FairPoint don’t apply to its competitors, he said. That includes service quality measurement, retail requirements and a special contract process that requires commission approval before any special offers take effect, he said.
A proposal last year sponsored by state Sen. Bob O'Dell (R) would exempt operators like FairPoint from special contract regulations. The full Senate sent it back to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which O'Dell chairs. The bill (SB-48) could be “the vehicle for the language FairPoint wants,” said Dan Feltes, attorney with New Hampshire Legal Assistance, which represents low-income consumers. The company is also working with regulators in Maine and Vermont on potential regulatory relief, a FairPoint spokesman said.
FairPoint has been meeting service quality standards in New Hampshire, McHugh said. But a recent audit conducted for the New Hampshire PUC by the Liberty Consulting Group questioned whether FairPoint’s reporting is accurate enough to show that it’s meeting the standards. The audit cited its calculation of percentage of service orders met each month, which is different from what the company claimed. The quality of service (QoS) process wasn’t intended to be an evolving program for the commission’s management of FairPoint’s customer relations, the company said. “The QoS has become increasingly obsolete in the current competitive environment,” FairPoint said in response to the Liberty audit. The current QoS process offers little marginal benefit to FairPoint’s customers, it said. The company may have made significant strides, but “we are still well short of where we all expected to be and where we all should be” in terms of customer service for business and retail customers in the three states, said New Hampshire PUC Chairman Thomas Getz during a commission hearing in September.