Tech News Vermont

The Battleboro Reformer and the AP reported that Fairpoint asked the Vermont Public Service Board for another week to explain why they should be allowed to continue to operate in Vermont.

The extension was granted and now Fairpoint has another week to put its case together.  It’s really not that tough.  Fairpoint is the only game in town and the state has done very little to attract other telecommunications companies to set up shop in Vermont.    Fairpoint has a fairly simple message to give the PSB, I’m sure they are just trying to find a nice and diplomatic way to say, “You’re stuck with us.”

Once they get that figured out, maybe they can fix my DSL, which still drops intermittenly and now when my line is working I can’t FTP anymore.  Great job Fairpoint, really super… not.

Vermont Public Radio is reporting that the Vermont Public Service board is “not bluffing” about the threat to revoke Fairpoint’s license to operate in Vermont pending the outcome of the meetings scheduled this week.

The key issue here isn’t that our sole vendor of telco service in the state has a poor quality product; the real issue is that the State of Vermont has a sole vendor for telco services in the first place.

The PSB should be working to grant more licenses to additional vendors, rather than focusing in on Fairpoint.  The general public is angry with Fairpoint and needs to have telco services as a matter of public safety so sure, the low hanging fruit in this scenario is to vilify Fairpoint and make political theater.

At some point in this process it will become too financially painful for Fairpoint to stay in Vermont and they will pack up their toys and go back to North Carolina.  This will leave 100s of Vermonters unemployed and throw the telco needs of Vermonters into total chaos.

Why can’t Vermont use the power of the market and bring more competition to the state telco industry?  Give Vermonters a choice in telco vendors and pressure Fairpoint into a quality product using good old fashioned competition.

In a radio report, VPR’s John Dilon reported about a comment made by the PSB about revoking Fairpoint’s license in Vermont.  A posting over at the Gerson Lehrman Group suggests that this is an idle threat and that the PSB really can’t revoke Fairpoint’s license without enacting a state-run telco.

It’s the PSB’s job to review these things BEFORE they happen and ensure that deals like the Verizon to Fairpoint switch don’t put the public in jeopardy.  The PSB is hearing from Vermonters all around the state who are having trouble with their phone and Internet service.  They have to do something, but what can they do?

They made an idle threat about licence revocation to a company that’s already struggling.  This reminds me of those parents I see in the supermarket who threaten a crying child with a spanking if they don’t hush up.

If Fairpoint loses its license to operate in Vermont a few things happen:

• All the Fairpoint phones go dead.
• Most the Internet connectivity goes dark.
• Vermont’s unemployment rate goes up (all those Vermonters working for Fairpoint get fired.)
• Lawyer come out of the wood work to sue everyone.

If the PSB really wanted to put pressure on Fairpoint, they wouldn’t talk about revoking licenses at all.  They would talk about granting licenses to other telco companies.  The PSB should start working with other telecommunications companies to bring more competition to Vermont.  That would motivate Fairpoint to improve much faster than some pie-in-the-sky threat about revoking their license.

After the threat, what’s happened?  Fairpoint says that they will continue to work on the initiatives already underway to fix the troubles in Vermont.  They’ve announced a executive restructuring (i.e. someone got moved/fired) and a renewed focus on their New England business unit.  They know there are problems and they are working to fix them.  It doesn’t help Fairpoint any that the Time Argus runs a front page above the fold story on the July holiday weekend about how one Fairpoint customer is having troubles.  Sure there are a number of Fairpoint customers having troubles.  I’m one of them; my DSL never works in the rain and it’s been raining a lot; and Fairpoint has yet to send the promised tech out to my house.

But I’m one customer, the lady in the Times Argus story is one customer, each news story focuses on one Fairpoint customer having troubles.  How many Fairpoint customers are there in Vermont?  Out of all the Fairpoint customers, what percentage are having problems,  that’s the number I’d like to see.

A county in Kentucky gets robbed by computer criminals who used software to trick county computers into transferring funds into money mole bank accounts.  Those moles were people who thought they were working for a legitimate business, but later found out that they’d been scammed.

Make sure you check out any company that offers to hire you over the Internet via email, solely based on your on-line resume.  Always know who you are dealing with if you are asked to send non-reversible financial instruments (i.e.money orders) to someone.

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