And another failure May 17 took 15 minutes to re-route calls. That’s not how long it took FairPoint to fix the broken system — that’s how long it took them to arrange for any 911 calls coming in to be answered by a human being who could help them, rather than hearing a busy signal or endless ringing.
The fix was actually relatively simple — there is now a physical transfer switch (much like a light switch) in the county dispatch center, and when the system goes down again, rather than relying on the questionable automatic system, a dispatcher will just reach over, flip the switch, and 911 calls will go to the state police in Gray.
On May 27, though, that office lost its connection for 10 minutes, and on May 28, a second malfunction caused a technician to shut down the system for seven hours. Another dispatch center was able to pick up the slack, but still, two people who called 911 were disconnected mid-call. That led state officials to demand physical transfer switches in six more dispatch offices.
And then between June 13 and 15, the Penobscot County dispatch center in Bangor, serving roughly 150,000 Mainers, lost service twice, once for six hours and the second time for more than 30 hours. In both cases, calls were routed to another dispatch center, but the first one was not detected by any automated system or even any dispatch staff — a citizen called 911, got a busy signal, and called her local police department’s non-emergency number to seek help.
On June 28, dispatchers at a 911 call center in Concord, New Hampshire, had trouble reaching police and fire departments in southern New Hampshire because of telephone problems lasting roughly 90 minutes, according to Foster’s Daily Democrat.
FairPoint says it has found and fixed the problems, but they’re not drawing anyone’s attention to the fact that soon we’ll be far worse off. Company officials and regulators agree that the systems that have been breaking down, while FairPoint’s responsibility, are actually the old systems created by Verizon. The problems likely “would have happened under Verizon,” says Wayne Jortner, senior counsel at Maine’s Office of the Public Advocate, which represents the public in utilities-regulation cases and has been a major player in the FairPoint dealings.
But soon, those old computer systems will be replaced with new ones created by FairPoint. Except Liberty’s reports say FairPoint’s SOFTWARE FOR HANDLING 911 CALLS IN MAINE IS NOT EVEN READY FOR TESTING! Liberty’s May 9 report says “a working version ... is not planned to exist until August.”
We can take some comfort in the fact that FairPoint officials and Maine regulators say they won't allow the cutover to happen until the state's 911 system is fully operational. But even if testing starts on schedule next month, any major problems could cause yet another delay. And while Verizon’s gear is old and breaking, FairPoint has nothing — nothing — to replace it.
Parting with cash
FairPoint will need to pay millions of dollars for all these new systems and testing and staff and training. Many of those costs were predicted before the deal was approved, though they included a few surprising financial assumptions by FairPoint (see “No Raises for Seven Years,” November 16, 2007; and “No Raises — It Gets Better,” November 20, 2007, both by Jeff Inglis).
