The Biddeford-based Great Works Internet company has asked state regulators to investigate the business paractices of FairPoint Communications. It's the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute between the two companies over whether FairPoint owes GWI some $3 million.

The dispute between Great Works Internet Company and FairPoint first arose in 2008, when GWI claimed that FairPoint had overcharged the Internet provider $1 million to rent lines, telephone poles and space.

"FairPoint said they want it 100 percent their way, and if we didn't accept that, they were going to bill us an additional $3 million -- that just seemed plucked out of the air," says Fletcher Kitteridge, CEO of GWI. He says FairPoint also threatened to terminate service to 3,000 GWI customers around the state.

"We negotiated back and forth, and then last week we ended up filing another filing with the PUC asking them to step in immediately," he says.

"We are aware of the petitiont hat was filed by GWI and we plan to file our response to the peititon today," says FairPoint spokesman Jeff Nevins. "This is the result of a long-standing disagreement between FairPoint and GWI, it goes back many years, and it simply involves our efforts to have GWI pay for using our network and for services rendered by our company."

The Maine Public Advocate has also gotten involved, siding with GWI, and they've petitioned the PUC to grant GWI's request to open an investigation into Fairpoint's business practices and to stop FairPoint from disconnecting customers until such an investigation is complete.

Maine Public Advocate Richard Davies says Fairpoint is butting heads with other small telephone and Internet service providers. "They also seem to have embarked on what we would consider an ill-considered and unduly harsh policy of billing enforcement and overly aggressive interpretations of applicable laws relative to the issue with GWI, and not just with them, but also with a number of the other competitive local exchange carriers.

In its filing with the commission, GWI claims that FairPoint has not documented the reasons for the $3 million in charges it has assessed, and that the company has not credited GWI for payments it has already made.

FairPoint's Nevins says the phone company will delay cutting off service to GWI for another month. "We're quite sure that they hadn't notified their customers, and as a result of that, we've extended it another month to give them time to make sure that their customers know the implications of this."

The matter has spilled over to federal bankruptcy court, where FairPoint is trying to rescue itself from its financial trouble. Last month, a bankruptcy judge ordered mediation between FairPoint and GWI to resolve GWI's claim of being overcharged.

Nevins says Fairpoint is making progress with its bankruptcy reorganization plan and the company is again pushing back the date for filing that plan to February first.

The question of which authority has jurisdiction over FairPoint's various actions -- either the PUC or federal bankruptcy court - is a recurring question. Evelyn deFrees of the Maine Public Utilities Commission says the PUC remains vigilent.

"We have retained bankruptcy counsel to help us navigate through the bankruptcy process, which obviously adds a degree of complexity to the ongoing work here," she says.

DeFrees says the PUC will review FairPoint's response to GWI's charges before it decides whether to launch an investigation.