Posted at 11:17 a.m., Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Hawaiian Tel gets $52M settlement from BearingPoint
Advertiser Staff
Hawaiian Telcom today said it received $52 million in cash as part of a previously announced settlement with McLean, Va.-based contractor BearingPoint Inc.The total value of that agreement to Hawaiian Telcom is more than $90 million including waivers of outstanding invoices with BearingPoint.
Hawaiian Telcom hired BearingPoint in August of 2004 to help as it took over Hawai'i's largest telephone network from Verizon Communications. But the transition, which was completed in April, was far from smooth with many customers complaining of billing errors and customer service problems.
In February Hawaiian Telcom and BearingPoint reached a mutual agreement to resolve contract issues and to transfer the remainder of BearingPoint's work to a company named Accenture. BearingPoint is continuing to transition the work to Accenture under terms of the settlement, Hawaiian telcom said.
"We are pleased to close this chapter, and we look forward to improvements in our back-office functionality," said Mike Ruley, Hawaiian Telcom's chief executive. "These improvements will help us continue to lift customer service levels and will support our ongoing deployments of modern networking technology statewide."
Hawaiian Telcom also announced that Chief Financial Officer Daniel O'Brien is leaving the company and will work to transition his duties to a successor CFO. The company said it plans to announce a successor in the near future and expects to complete the transition by the end of April.
