Connecticut Attorney General's Office
Press Release
Attorney General, OCC Ask DPUC To Fine AT&T For Failure To Comply With Orders Related To State Phone Repair Requirements
March 5, 2010
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Consumer Counsel Mary J. Healey today asked the Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) to fine AT&T for ignoring three DPUC orders since June to explain why it has failed since 2001 to meet state phone repair requirements and submit a compliance plan.
The Communications Workers of America Local 1298 also joined the request.
The DPUC found in June 2009 that AT&T has failed since 2001 to obey state law requiring it to fix 90 percent of broken phones within 24 hours and ordered it to submit an explanation and a compliance timetable. AT&T has since failed to comply with three DPUC orders to do so -- seeking at times to blame its noncompliance on the weather.
In its most response dated February 15, AT&T stated it would take no further steps “until the out of service standard is eliminated or modified.”
Blumenthal said, “AT&T’s shameful stonewalling demands a stinging rebuke -- a serious message-sending fine. This company is thumbing its nose at the state and consumers, brazenly defying the law and its public safety duty. Now is lesson time: Disregard safety standards and you will pay a painful penalty.
“AT&T’s apparent attitude is that it’s above any law it doesn’t like and wants to end. Failing to meet state repair standards endangers public health and safety -- especially the elderly and disabled who rightly regard working phones as a matter of life and death. The company’s inexcusable, longstanding failure to meet repair requirements -- more than 90 straight months and counting -- coincides with phone repair force layoffs, from 1,089 to 569. AT&T is apparently boosting its profits at the expense of much-needed jobs and public safety.
“I will fight to compel AT&T’s compliance with DPUC’s repair standards,” Blumenthal said.
Healey said, “My office filed this motion today, joined by the Attorney General and the Communications Workers of America, because it is clear that AT&T-Connecticut’s persistent noncompliance with state regulations and DPUC orders that require it to provide a breakdown of the causes of outages, along with specific plans to improve its repair times must be addressed through meaningful DPUC penalties.
“Connecticut consumers have endured AT&T’s substandard repair times for far too long. The company provides no good reason for its nine-year failure to meet the regulatory standard for repairing outages. AT&T’s constant excuse for its failure to meet the standard is that it rained. This is not a valid excuse. The company’s network is supposed to be built and maintained to withstand normal, rainy weather. As a public service company, it is AT&T’s core responsibility to provide reliable service and perform repairs expeditiously.
“The company can certainly afford to provide the type of service that meets the standard. AT&T has approximately 1.3 million access lines in Connecticut and it earns an astounding return on its investment here. For 2007 and 2008, the two most recent reported years, its annual return on average equity was approximately 29%. In those two years, AT&T-Connecticut paid its corporate parent dividends of $322.5 million. Plus, the company paid $122 million in royalty fees to an out-of-state affiliate. In short, the company profits very nicely in our state.
“The first step to improving repair times is to identify the specific causes of outages. AT&T persistently fails to provide that information, as required by regulation and order. Apparently, the company needs an incentive to comply. Therefore, we are today requesting that the DPUC use its fining authority to impose a significant fine on AT&T, one that increases with each day of continued noncompliance,” Healey said.
Communications Workers of America Local 1298 President William Henderson, said, “The Communications Workers Of America has requested the DPUC continuously over the past year to enforce the standards that have been in place for over the last 20 years because we realize that a law without a penalty is a law that will be ignored. The record is clear: AT&T has not met or even come close to meeting the standard continuously every month for the last seven years, thus ignoring the law. This failure to enforce the law has been done at the expense of Connecticut's subscribers who depend on their phone system to be the best system possible, and we believe that our customers deserve that level of service."
The DPUC in June 2009 found that AT&T had failed to meet state repair requirements since 2001 and ordered the company to provide a timeline and a plan to come into compliance, and an explanation for its failure to meet the standard.
AT&T response failed to include a timeline for compliance or fully explain why it fails to meet the standard, prompting the DPUC to order it to provide the missing information. Its October filing again failed to include a timeline and requested data.
In November, the DPUC informed AT&T that it failed to give any basis for blaming bad weather and third parties for its failure to meet the repair requirement and ordered it to provide the information.
The company’s response on February 15 again failed to fully explain AT&T’s noncompliance. It said the company is testing a system to identify weather-related outages, but provided no details or explanation of the system. AT&T blamed all outages between January 25 and 30 on the weather without explanation or elaboration.
AT&T said it will take no further steps “until the out of service standard is eliminated or modified.”