Tip: FairPoint faked readiness
(Aug. 25, AP) ... state regulators are reviewing an anonymous e-mail from someone believed by a Maine regulator to be a FairPoint insider who charges that during tests leading up to the Feb. 1 ?cutover,? FairPoint created a computer program ?to deceive the audience into believing they were watching a real demonstration? of its readiness. ...Incredible if true. And it's certainly plausible, given the horrors that followed. What was it FairPoint officials have said over the last few weeks, "I believe in transparency" and that its service issues were "unprecedented and unforeseen." Sheeeesh.
In his original e-mail, sent Aug. 14 to regulators, the writer, who called himself ?David Unavailable,? wrote:
?As January neared and it appeared to everyone on site in Atlanta that there would be another delay, suddenly Peter Nixon [FairPoint?s president] and Gene Johnson [its then-CEO] made the announcement that the cut to the new systems would take place at the end of January and the relationship with Verizon would end. Most people were stunned as it did not appear feasible.? ...
In his later note to the AP, the writer said FairPoint had a strong incentive to complete the cutover: It was paying monthly fees to Verizon for continuing to use its system after the sale between the two companies closed. This was confirmed by a report filed by Liberty with state regulators.
The writer told regulators that ?when Liberty [a consulting firm] was watching what they thought was ?flow thru? within a system and from one system to another, they were really only seeing a small program that was created to assimilate what they wanted the systems to do. They were not actually in the systems at the time nor were they in the test systems. They were in a newly created small program that used screen shots from the real system to deceive the audience into believing that they were watching a real demonstration.?
Posted by The Owl at 23:23. Filed under: Labor and business
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