PORTLAND, Maine — If a customer in Bangor, Portland or five other major population centers asks FairPoint Communications for basic landline phone service, the company has to provide it at a price set by state regulators. But not for much longer.
As early as late August, FairPoint will no longer offer service as the provider of last resort for seven communities, and there are more to come.
Lawmakers approved and Gov. Paul LePage earlier this month signed LD 466, which allows regulators to gradually shrink the list of places where it requires FairPoint to provide basic landline service, or POLR service, to any customer who requests it.
The law doesn’t mean FairPoint will drop landline service in those areas or cut off current landline customers.
In any areas removed, the company has to provide an additional year of price-controlled service to existing POLR customers. After that, it has to seek further state approvals to reduce or discontinue service to landline customers in areas where it previously was the provider of last resort.
In places where other Internet providers compete and cell service is reliable enough that customers are cutting the cord, FairPoint has argued its status as the default landline provider is unnecessary and unfair.
State regulators established that requirement with the deregulation of the telephone industry out of concern that telephone companies would abandon hard-to-reach parts of the state.
In those areas where FairPoint will still be required to provide landline service, the law caps its rates at $20 per month and increases would be capped at 5 percent annually.
The new law sets out seven communities that will be removed from FairPoint’s required service list 30 days after the law takes effect, which will be 90 days after the Legislature adjourns. With adjournment expected at the end of April, that puts removal of the first seven communities from FairPoint’s POLR list by August.
If the company meets certain performance metrics, the law then sets out that regulators can remove up to 15 additional communities from the list, in batches of five, every six months.
The company said in previous testimony that it has about 10,000 customers in the 22 communities identified in the bill as slated for removal from mandated landline service requirements.
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The law also requires the company to notify customers of pending changes on monthly bills and requires the Maine Public Utilities Commission to hold meetings about the changes before they take place.
Bangor, Portland, Auburn, Biddeford, Lewiston, Sanford and South Portland will be the first areas where FairPoint is freed from the service requirement. The second batch includes Cape Elizabeth, Gorham, Kennebunk, Scarborough and Waterville.
The third includes Bath, Freeport, Old Orchard Beach, Westbrook and Yarmouth. The fourth includes Augusta, Brewer, Brunswick, Kittery and Windham. At the fastest regulatory clip, FairPoint would be freed of mandatory landline service in those areas by early 2018.
The law then sets a different process to remove other communities, requiring a review to assess the level of competition and access customers have to some kind of voice service.
That review requires finding that at least one wireline voice network serves at least 95 percent of households and that one or more mobile phone providers reach at least 97 percent of the households in that area, based on data telecom companies provide to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
The AARP of Maine came out as the strongest opponent to an initial version of the bill, but withdrew objections after negotiating grandfathered rates for current customers and other consumer protection provisions.