In April 2025, the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission, or UTC, staff recommended the UTC impose more than $15.5 million in penalties against CenturyLink Communications.
CenturyLink is available in 16 states in the northern Midwest and Western parts of the United States. It’s a telecommunications company that offers internet, landline phone, and TV services for residential and small business customers.
The penalty recommendation by UTC staff was based on 1.663 million potential violations. As the staff reviewed possible violations, a calculation error was discovered, the UTC said in a statement. The revised number of potential violations is 739,302.
The new recommended penalty is about $10.9 million, still the largest potential penalty UTC staff have requested.
A hearing on the complaints and fine is set for April 6 and 7.
Following a large increase in consumer complaints about CenturyLink, the UTC staff launched an investigation on two areas – the quality of service provided by CenturyLink and the company’s responsiveness to requests for information from the UTC staff.
The staff reviewed service quality, service outages, and service interruption data provided by CenturyLink from April 1, 2023, through March 12, 2024. The staff also reviewed consumer complaints to the UTC on service quality from March 13, 2024, to Jan. 1, 2025.
State law allows public service companies that violate the law to be fined up to $1,000 per offense.
Breakdown of the recommended penalties
Penalties are recommended across three categories, according to the UTC staff:
- Failing to provide services in a sufficient, prompt, and reasonable manner, and ensuring that equipment and facilities were in good condition and repair.
- Failing to provide adequate maintenance to ensure all facilities are in safe and serviceable condition, failing to immediately correct conditions, endangering continuity of service, and failing to promptly repair or replace broken, damaged, or deteriorated equipment.
- Failing to thoroughly investigate commission-referred complaints, report the results, and respond to urgent complaints within two business days and staff requests for additional information within three business days.
CenturyLink is the largest local telephone company in Washington state, serving about 650,000 residential and business lines.
