Phone companies could face severe penalties for not repairing their phone service within 24 hours if Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, can rally enough support to pass legislation he introduced Monday.

A service shortage in 2000 while Ameritech was working out details of its merger with SBC Communications motivated Black to introduce the bill.

“We received tremendous amounts of consumer complaints about telephone service where lines went down and weren’t fixed,” Black said. “This bill would increase the potential fines dramatically.”

Black said he fought against a bill in 1994 that deregulated phone service in Wisconsin, and while proponents of that bill claimed it would lead to better service, it has actually hurt the quality of service.

With the Ameritech shortage in 2000, then-Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, R-Waukesha, asked Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Ashwaubenon, to head a special task force on telecommunications in Wisconsin. Montgomery sits on the Assembly Committee on Energy and Utilities, which will review the bill.

“Rep. Black fails to recognize his bill will only result in higher phone bills for the most vulnerable by targeting SBC-Ameritech and Verizon Communications,” Montgomery said.

Black said SBC-Ameritech was at fault for the 2000 failures by the Public Service Commission, which regulates phone service in the state.

Black called the 2000 shortage a “meltdown” and said that when it happened, other states were able to levy much stiffer penalties for failed service. According to Black, the $2.2 million in penalties were not significant enough to affect a company with annual revenues of $1.3 billion.

SBC-Ameritech and Verizon are the only companies required to provide phone service to any citizen in the state who wants it. Therefore, they are required to provide service to customers that make them more susceptible to fines under Black’s bill, such as those who live in remote rural areas. Montgomery said the small percentage of outages that could not be repaired within 24 hours would fall in those areas, and levying fines against SBC-Ameritech for those reasons would be unfair considering the $1.1 billion the company has invested in upgrading its network in the state since 1999.

Montgomery said in conservative estimates he has seen, Black’s bill could cost phone companies up to $48 million a year. Those companies, he said, are already meeting service standards set up by the state by repairing over 95 percent of downed phone lines within 24 hours.

“That $48 million to, for example, SBC’s operating costs are just going to be passed on to the customers, who will eventually be footing the bill,” Montgomery said. “The state government realized over 100 years ago when the telephone was invented how important it was for everyone to have access to phone service, and that’s why they granted regional Bell companies a monopoly to set up service for everyone.”

Montgomery said Black’s bill is especially unnecessary considering the problems that caused the 2000 failures had been already dealt with.

“It’s 20/20 hindsight, three years later, on a problem that was dealt with at the time,” Montgomery said. “It’s like trying to kill a flea with an elephant.”