By Matthew Cabe, The Daily Press
SACRAMENTO — Frontier Communications expects to move through and resolve its April complaint backlog over the next 10 days, according to a company executive who answered questions during a hearing Wednesday of the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce.
Melinda White, Frontier’s west-region president, fielded questions from committee members related not only to service and outages, but also to public safety and the company’s inability to effectively address customer-service issues.
She called Frontier’s takeover of Verizon’s voice, video, data and FiOS network the “largest flash cutover in the history of telecom.”
On April 1, Frontier acquired 3.3 million landlines, 2.1 million broadband connections and 1.2 million fiber-optic customers in the three states, according to a previous Daily Press report.
“Prior to April 1,” White said, “we already cut over the core network … Where we were not able to go further was waiting to day one to talk to the many devices in the field.”
White said database corruption and inaccurate serial numbers on hardware are largely to blame for the myriad problems Frontier customers, including those in the High Desert, have experienced as a result of the cutover.
In addition to the 10-day commitment, Frontier expects full restoration of video-on-demand services by mid-June, according to White.
Upon hearing White’s explanation, Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, R-Hesperia, asked why a rolling cutover wasn’t implemented, and he noted some of the complaints he’s received, including one from an Apple Valley couple whose home-alarm system failed to connect with their alarm company during a recent burglary.
White said that a rolling cutover wasn’t the best option in this case.
“The fact is that six years ago, in 2010, (Frontier) bought 14 states, and that was a three-year conversion,” White said. “Given the network and the various parties needs, the flash cutover was the best option.”
Obernolte told the Daily Press after the hearing he was frustrated to hear that the company underestimated the number of problems.
“It was far greater than they were representing,” Obernolte said, “and I’m unsatisfied with their explanation with how they thought the cutover occurred. This was one of the largest cutovers in history and they could have easily done a rolling cutover or a test cutover of a portion of the service. Either one of those would have revealed the corrupted data extracts.”
Customer-service complaints fielded by committee members, and by the California Public Utilities Commission, were also addressed Wednesday.
White said approximately 4,000 employees came to Frontier from Verizon, and training was required to familiarize those employees with Frontier’s system.
Training began on “day one,” according to White, and approximately 10,000 customer service representatives — 75 percent of which were U.S. based — were brought on to handle any issues in the interim.
“Unfortunately, much to our dismay, it did not work out,” White said. “(There were) lots of incremental volumes of calls that we did not anticipate.”
Committee members also asked about the high number of home-service calls assigned to Frontier technicians that customers later said never transpired.
White offered that it’s possible the call centers never entered a “trouble ticket” even if customers were told a Frontier representative would be out to their homes on a certain day, and that the company had not planned for “this type of an event.”
“We were very slow early on,” White said. “... Today, techs are completing five or six trouble tickets a day. We just needed that sooner, and we didn’t have the resources necessary.”
Meanwhile, the CPUC approved the Frontier’s merger with Verizon prior to the transition, and CPUC Executive Director Tim Sullivan also answered questions during the hearing.
The CPUC generally receives 127 related complaints per month, according to Sullivan, who said 867 complaints were received between April and the first week of May — a “five- to ten-fold increase.”
“Complaint data will be packaged and given to the investigators from the Utility Enforcement Branch and (we could) possibly seek action against company,” Sullivan said. “The commissioner could (also) reopen merger proceedings.”
The committee, however, was unimpressed with the CPUC’s handling of the situation prior to the merger. Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the committee and called for the hearing earlier this month, had choice words for Sullivan.
“I’m disappointed with our regulatory agency," he said. “I’m also disappointed that we live in a world where this has occurred (before) and it sounds to me that our regulatory agency did not learn from those mistakes. That to me is very unfortunate and the CPUC has let down the customers.”
After the hearing, Obernolte agreed that the CPUC didn’t do its job overseeing the transition.
“They could have insisted (in a rolling cutover) as part of their role in overseeing the transition and they didn't do that,” Obernolte said. “This is far from the first issue where we feel the CPUC did not provide effective oversight. This is just the latest incident in a long string of problems. We’re grappling with the decision of how much authority the CPUC has.”
Gatto has introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 11, according to Obernolte, which is a bill that would request from voters the authority to reassign powers the CPUC exercises over various industries.
“I think we were very clear with the CPUC that the status quo is not acceptable,” Obernolte said, “and I think that if Frontier is not successful in solving these problems quickly, we can take further action. These are regulated industries and we have a right to step in when public safety is compromised … That would be the next step.”
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©2016 Daily Press, Victorville, Calif.
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