Frontier Communication’s service outage problem is three times bigger than any other major California utility, judging by consumer complaints submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission during the covid–19 emergency. On a per customer basis the bankrupt telco’s wireline outage complaints were triple those of AT&T, and greater than Southern California Edison’s or Pacific Gas and Electric’s on an absolute basis, despite having fewer than half the number of customers as either of the two electric companies.
CPUC commissioners were briefed on utility customer complaints at their meeting last week. The presentation followed two landmark votes that declared broadband to be public utilities – one setting 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds as the “essential service quantity” of broadband and another requiring wireless companies to maintain “basic internet browsing” capability “during a disaster or commercial power outage”.
That’s an obligation that generally applies to Internet service, CPUC president Marybel Batjer said…
These are definitely difficult times and, as we all know, the pandemic has altered our lives in so many ways, as people are trying to adjust to what we’re calling this new normal. And I appreciate that the CPUC is making sure that residents are able to keep the lights on and more easily get access to the Internet, for work and for school. And we are committed to meeting our core responsibility of ensuring the safe delivery of our services that Californians so rely on to conduct their daily lives.
The CPUC received 49 complaints about unplanned service outages from Frontier customers between 15 March 2020 and 13 June 2020, which comes out to 22 complaints per one million customers. AT&T generated more outage complaints – 69 – but it has nearly five times as many wireline customers as Frontier. PG&E and SCE drew fewer unplanned outage complaints – 38 and 20, respectively – and fewer total complaints per one million customers.
Money – disconnections due to non-payment and payment arrangements – was the biggest source of complaints about PG&E. SCE caught the most flack for planned service outages, which would have been for maintenance – there haven’t been any public safety power shutoffs for wildfire prevention purposes so far this year.