FairPoint Asks Maine Commission to Relax Broadband Expansion Stipulations, Price Controls

Maine regulators will spend three months reviewing a petition by FairPoint Communications to accept the company’s bankruptcy reorganization plan and to grant it relief from performance requirements. FairPoint petitioned March 5 for commission approval of its plan and to revise a 2008 order granting it the right to acquire Verizon’s phone network, the commission said.

According to the schedule released Monday by the Public Utility Commission, objections on intervention are due Thursday. Intervenor data requests must be in by March 25. FairPoint data responses are due April 5, with intervenor testimony due by April 15 and FairPoint data requests by April 21. Intervenor data responses are due April 28. The commission will hold expert witness hearings May 5-7. Briefs are due May 12. If the commission hews to its predicted three-month calendar, a decision could come in June.

Among changes FairPoint seeks is a delay from April to December of the completion deadline for the first phase of broadband expansion. The company also wants to cut by 3 percent the total percentage of lines expected to be carrying broadband at the end of the five-year expansion. And FairPoint wants the commission to lift certain pricing restrictions for broadband and to relax some debt restrictions.

The telco is pursuing similar proceedings in Vermont and New Hampshire, the other New England states where it bought Verizon networks. FairPoint’s bankruptcy plan “will be considered in an open proceeding during which interested parties will have a full opportunity to be heard prior to the public deliberations of the Commission,” the regulator said.

FairPoint and Great Works Internet dispute the terms under which the local carrier and wholesalers may access dark fiber owned by FairPoint, the commission said. It ordered the companies to “negotiate in good faith” so no customers lose service and to file comments at the FCC on their dispute, whose resolution likely will take the form of an order by the federal agency.