CenturyLink seeks waiver from landline requirement

The Iowa Utilities Board is deliberating what to do about an investigation into more than two dozen complaints from CenturyLink customers who say they were without landline service for as many as several weeks.

At the same time, CenturyLink officials are asking the board to waive state requirements for restoring landline services within three days, citing added strain put on the company with its participation in a national rural broadband program.

The Utilities Board last week held a public hearing to address 27 customer complaints over the length of time it took Qwest Corporation, doing business as CenturyLink, to restore telephone services during an outage. Board rules require all out-of-service reports be cleared within 72 hours.

The hearing stems from an investigation by Iowa's Office of Consumer Advocate, a division of the Iowa Department of Justice, over customer complaints of extended outages for CenturyLink's landline service.

According to state documents, some customers lost landline service, including the ability to dial 911 for emergencies, for as much as several weeks after initial complaints to CenturyLink were made.

'Several complaints came in last August and September with regards to CenturyLink,” said Mark Schuling, Iowa's consumer advocate. 'We filed a proceeding stating that the failure to clear the outages on a timely basis by CenturyLink put at risk the health and safety of CenturyLink customers and there needed to be a proceeding on it.”

While the board deliberates about the complaints, CenturyLink has sought a waiver of the board's out-of-service repair requirements, arguing the company's participation in the Federal Communications Commission's Connect America Fund program make it difficult to restore service within the 72-hour requirement.

CenturyLink is one of 10 telecommunications carriers - one of three in Iowa - to receive nearly $9 billion in federal funding over six years to expand rural broadband.

CenturyLink officials requested that waiver for the build-out period - estimated to run from 2015 through 2020 - with a possible additional year.

Michael Sadler, director of government relations for CenturyLink, said the company's increased focus on expanding rural broadband makes it difficult to meet landline outage requirements, which were adopted more than 10 years ago.

'As we're looking at the amount of work that is going to go into the broadband deployment, it's going to be very difficult for us to also maintain their service quality standards that already don't make any sense,” Sadler said. 'When the rules were written with those requirements, there was essentially a monopoly telephone environment, wireless phones really hadn't caught on yet. It was a different era.”

Sadler said CenturyLink, which has thousands of Iowa customers, might get about 100 customer complaints in an average year.

The number of complaints made against CenturyLink warranted the initial investigation, Schuling said.

'It was a lot in a short period of time and that's why we determined that it was appropriate to initiate a proceeding,” Schuling said.

Donald Tormey, communications and customer service manager with the Iowa Utilities Board, said there is no set timeline for the board to decide the case and said he could not comment on the board's options while the case is pending.