Summary
1. Around the same time that there is the warning of possible management firings, a report comes out that appears to be a hatchet job on FairPoint Communications. 2. The report could not get past the beginning of page two to unfairly bring up Hawaii. 3. At least there was the obvious acknowledgement that “the problems encountered so far have not reached the scale of those seen in the Hawaiian Telcom.”
Analysis
In the report, there is also the recognition that “the cutover process itself...proceeded relatively smoothly.” However, in terms of “the post-cutover operations,” the paper mentioning that “the Regulators in all three states have been receiving an unprecedented number of customer complaints,” as the second point stated in terms of problems (and really outside of the scope of the consulting company) seems to take away any sense of objectivity. Moreover, there is a tremendous focus on the difficulties at wholesale companies. It is good to know that there is finally so much concern for corporations by the regulators. But it only seems logical that FairPoint would put its emphasis on its own subscribers. And is it only to be expected that the potential complexity with interfacing with other carriers is going to be higher than in dealing with individual consumers.
It is not mentioned in the report that FairPoint had to rid itself of a tremendous amount of overly archaic as well as complex network and operations systems that go back to the original Ma Bell days. In addition, the attacks on the management of FairPoint are not convincing and the highly pessimistic outlook for the company is apparently based on speculation more than anything else.
