Friday, November 02, 2007

AT&T fined by California for poor telephone service restoration

The California Public Utilities Commission announced it has levied nearly $1 million in fines against AT&T for failing to restore phone service outages in a timely manner in 2006. The fines are in addition to $900,000 in fines imposed on the telco for failing to meet service standards the previous year.

At the root of the restoration problem is AT&T's aging copper cable infrastructure that took a beating during California's rainy season during the first three months of 2006.

The regulatory actions against AT&T raise major questions about the big telco's ability to deliver advanced telecommunications services including high speed Internet access when it has difficulty maintaining even plain old telephone service (POTS) and explain to a large degree why many California customers of AT&T are still not offered wireline broadband nearly two years later.

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