Is there any way FairPoint Communications can stop the bleeding in its New England territories? Newly appointed company Chairman and CEO David Hauser thinks there is: hire another executive to focus on the problems and shuffle the existing executive deck. Hauser has hired Vicky Weatherwax to be the ILEC's vice president of business solutions, and she'll need to develop some solutions indeed, as Vermont and other New England states are threatening more legal action against FairPoint Communications for its inability to resolve customer service and operational issues.
Weatherwax has her work cut out for her. She will have the daunting task of creating what Hauser calls a "plan of action" to rectify customer service, billing and other related systems problems since it purchased Verizon's telephone lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Hauser said Weatherwax's goal is to win back customers' trust. "If I was going to focus on anything, it's a sense of urgency to get operations where the customer says we're doing a great job," Hauser told The Associated Press.
Weatherwax was just one of many organizational changes made at FairPoint. Hauser also put Executive Vice President Jeff Allen in charge of overseeing northern New England operations, while President Peter Nixon will focus his attention on overseeing external operations in northern New England and will lead operations at FairPoint's other properties outside of the region. These appointments come a day after Vermont's Department of Public Service said it was going to launch an investigation into whether FairPoint should be allowed to continue to operate in Vermont if its ongoing problems are not fixed.
For more:
- Here's the official release
- Associated Press has this report
Related articles
FairPoint names Duke Energy's Hauser CEO
FairPoint's Vermont network problems continue to swell
From bad to worse for FairPoint in Vermont
N.H. PUC puts FairPoint on notice, requests more info