FairPoint Communications is ahead of its goals for whittling down pending requests for phone service, but continues to struggle with orders that are getting hung up in its computer system, according to the latest progress report from the company to the Maine Public Utilities Commission.

These and other assessments, from the week of May 22, suggest FairPoint is making headway -- but faces challenges -- in its pledge to return phone service in northern New England to "business as usual" levels by June 30.

Submitted weekly, the so-called milestone results provide an ongoing glimpse of FairPoint's efforts to meet a stabilization plan drawn up in March at the request of regulators in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The plan is meant to quell widespread consumer dissatisfaction with FairPoint's ability to answer customer questions, install telephones and provide Internet service, since it took over the landline network in February from Verizon Communications and became the region's dominant phone carrier.

Maine's PUC has declined to speculate on whether FairPoint is on track to bring the overall network to business-as-usual levels by month's end. Beyond the weekly milestone results, though, the agency collects daily status information from the company. Staff and consultants at the Office of Public Advocate, which is monitoring the plan, say it's too early to know whether FairPoint can sustain the progress over time, or if it can regain the confidence of customers and investors.

Questions about the company's progress are likely to come up Wednesday, at FairPoint's annual meeting for shareholders in Charlotte, N.C. The company is under extreme financial pressure. High debt and a loss of customers had led to a battered stock price, downgraded credit ratings and concerns that FairPoint could be forced into bankruptcy.

For its part, FairPoint says it's digging out of a hole that was deepest in March, when it was swamped with 85,000 calls a week from customers with problems ranging from phone hook-ups to billing. Call volumes have fallen now to around 35,000 a week, which is normal, according to Jeff Nevins, a FairPoint spokesman.

"We're making progress every day," he said. "We're confident we'll be back at business as usual by the end of June."

The milestones FairPoint is trying to achieve reflect quality benchmarks set by the Maine PUC. These include how long customers hold for a call center representative or the time they wait for repairs. The agency can levy fines when those benchmarks aren't met; it fined FairPoint's predecessor, Verizon, millions of dollars for substandard service quality. For now, those penalties are being waived for FairPoint, which has suspended dividend payments and taken other steps to conserve cash.

FairPoint's milestone results show, for instance, that it's having trouble meeting targets on reducing the number of unsubmitted orders, requests that get entered into a computer, but don't move to completion and must be handled manually.

The company had 7,906 unsubmitted orders on March 2. Business as usual is defined at between 1,500 and 2,000. The company cut the number to 2,422 in mid-April. But it has failed to meet weekly targets since then, with unsubmitted orders actually growing during three recent weeks.

In a written explanation, FairPoint blamed the increase on vacation time and other factors that cut the number of customer service reps. Newly hired staff that just completed training should solve the problem, the company said.

By contrast, trimming late orders for basic telephone service is ahead of objectives. The company faced 8,540 late orders in mid-April. It set a goal of 6,500 during the week of May 22, but had already cut the backlog to 4,988.

"They're making progress in some areas, and in others are working to meet their own goals," said Andrew Hagler, a PUC division director.

Hagler said it's not appropriate for him to predict whether FairPoint is on track to meet its June 30 goal of normalizing service. But because many key problems are tied to software glitches and the company's new computer system, Hagler said he was hopeful that solving those issues would lead to long-term fixes.

That remains to be seen, in the view of David Brevitz of Brevitz Consulting Services, a Kansas-based telecommunications expert working with the Public Advocate. Some of the progress FairPoint's making, he said, has come from using employees to manually work around computer problems in processing orders. Those issues must be solved, to maintain normal service levels over time.

"I'm concerned about sustainability," Brevitz said. "We need to see a period of sustained results and achievements."

FairPoint has hired consultants to help resolve these and other problems.

Beyond operating issues, FairPoint also needs to achieve financial stability, said Wayne Jortner, an attorney with the Public Advocate. His office has been reviewing the company's financial condition.

"We don't see anything right now that leads us to conclude that they will fail and go into bankruptcy," he said.

Assuming FairPoint can achieve and maintain normal service levels, Jortner said, the company has the potential to regain customers with well-priced Internet service and reliable landline service. Its challenge will be overcoming negative publicity and bad experiences that have prompted thousands of customers to flee to cable companies and other competitors, however.

For now, Nevins said, the challenge is taking the temporary fixes that are trimming backlogs and make them permanent.

It could take several more months of internal work, he said, that customers hopefully won't notice.

"We don't see June 30th as the finish line," he said.