Members of Congress from Vermont and New Hampshire have called on the Federal Communications Commission to assess the ability of FairPoint Communications to operate emergency communications networks in both states following outages last year.
There was a six-hour outage of Vermont's 911 system in November and a four-hour outage of Portsmouth, New Hampshire 911 services in December.
With about 1,800 FairPoint workers on strike in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont since October, the lawmakers said in a letter Wednesday to the FCC that FairPoint's networks and equipment have failed with increasing frequency and complaints from customers have soared.
It was from Vermont Sens. Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy and Rep. Peter Welch; and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Rep. Annie Kuster.
A message seeking comment was sent to FairPoint.
