Press Releases
11/19/2024
Consumer Counsel Coleman Announces Pro-Consumer Settlement in Frontier Quality of Service Violations Case
NEW BRITAIN, CT – Today, Consumer Counsel Claire Coleman announced a settlement agreement with the Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) d/b/a Frontier Communications to address the Notice of Violation and penalty the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (“PURA”) assessed against Frontier for its prolonged and repeated failures to meet state quality of service standards and performance filing requirements in July of this year. The settlement agreement provides Frontier customers with credits for those impacted by Frontier’s repeated failures, while ensuring customers will receive better quality of service moving forward with the imposition of credits for any future violations. The agreement is binding on the existing company as well as any successor seeking acquisition of the company.
“Consumers across the state pay top dollar for the critical services Frontier provides, but when Frontier fails to live up to their end of the bargain, they have a debt to pay to their customers. This settlement agreement will directly help those harmed by these failures and discourage future lapses. Not only will affected customers receive both retrospective and prospective bill credits, but my office preserved and expanded upon critical reporting standards Frontier tried to erase from Connecticut regulation. I am grateful to my team for their hard work and the results we achieved on behalf of Connecticut consumers,” said Consumer Counsel Coleman.
PURA’s July 2023 Final Decision and Notice of Violation concluded a six-month proceeding initiated by a petition for investigation filed by the Office of Consumer Counsel after identifying numerous counts of noncompliance within Frontier’s self-reported semi-annual service quality filings.
PURA agreed with OCC’s findings that Frontier failed to meet the minimum Maintenance Appointment Met (MAM) standard for 35 months and the minimum Out of Service Repair (OSR) standard for 51 months, from January 2015 to December 2023. In addition, Frontier also failed to file 16 required exception reports for 3-month periods in which Frontier failed to meet the minimum standards, and those reports were, cumulatively, 8,811 days overdue as of December 31, 2023. Directly following that decision, PURA issued a Notice of Violation with a proposed civil penalty of $2,481,000 civil penalty to be paid to Operation Fuel and the state in accordance with its authority under Connecticut General Statutes Section 16-41. A hearing had been scheduled where Frontier intended to contest the Notice of Violation and proposed penalty in a new contested hearing.
The settlement agreement, approved today by PURA, ends Frontier's challenge in the contested docket, avoids subsequent appeals, and allows funding to be directed to who were impacted or will be impacted by Frontier's failures in the future. It provides $860,000 in retroactive bill credits to Frontier’s customers directly impacted by missed appointments and/or service outages lasting 48 hours or more from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2024. For those impacted by Frontier’s failure to meet this standard, Frontier will issue a minimum credit of $70 for each missed appointment and issue a $10 daily credit to customers who reported service outages exceeding 48 hours or more. Going forward, the settlement agreement provides an automatic $10 daily bill credit for service outages with a duration of 48 hours or more, as well as $70 bill credit for each missed maintenance appointment beginning January 1, 2025 and continuing until December 31, 2027. The prospective credit will incentivize the company to comply with Quality-of-Service standards – including public safety issues like outage restoration – moving forward.
The final provision of the settlement agreement requires the company to continue to file semi-annual Quality of Service Reports with PURA, and importantly, expands the scope of reporting to include: plans to improve company operations and performance in any region Frontier fails to meet the applicable out of service or missed maintenance appointment standard, and company expenditures as they relate to the category of wireline service infrastructure and the associated work being performed.
More information regarding the settlement agreement can be found here and here. PURA's approval, issued today, can be found here.
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CONTACT:
Brooke Parker
Communications & Legislative Program Manager
brooke.parker@ct.gov
About the Office: The Office of Consumer Counsel (OCC) is an independent state agency that represents the interests of consumers of Connecticut’s electric, natural gas, telecommunications, and private water companies before PURA, federal regulatory agencies, the legislature and courts. OCC’s team of attorneys, accountants, financial and policy analysts appear before PURA to argue for the most reasonable rates while expecting the best utility service possible for all customers.