FairPoint Communications has been issued a $25,000 penalty by the state for failing to fulfill its contractual obligations following recent disruptions in the 911 dispatch system at the Cumberland County Regional Communication Center in Windham.

The cause of the disruptions has been located and fixed, a FairPoint spokesman Jeff Nevins said Monday, and the company has taken steps to ensure that future malfunctions are handled more smoothly.

Bill Holmes, director of the Cumberland County Regional Communication Center in Windham where the 911 system is located, said he is “cautiously optimistic” that FairPoint has addressed the problem, but prepared if the system fails again.

The 911 system at the Cumberland County Regional Communication Center in Windham, which serves 17 communities, malfunctioned five times over a two-day period in April, then again in mid May. On those occasions, 911 calls were rerouted to the state dispatch center in Gray.

But during the April malfunctions, the calls were not forwarded to the Gray call center in the timely manner spelled out by FairPoint’s contract, said Fred Bever, a spokesman with the Emergency Services Communications Bureau, which oversees the state’s 911 system, including the operations contract with FairPoint.

Under the state contract, payments to FairPoint are deducted if the 911 system does not run properly 99.99 percent of the time, Bever said. Critical failures, in which all emergency calls are lost and not rerouted, can only amount to around five minutes of total time in a given month, he said. After the malfunctions in mid-April, the calls were not rerouted quickly enough and FairPoint went over the limit, which automatically instituted the deduction, Bever said.

FairPoint later identified the software problems that caused the disruptions, and have dealt with them, said Nevins. In addition, FairPoint has installed a switch at the Windham facility to allow officials there to instantly transfer calls to Gray in the event of a malfunction. Previously, dispatchers in Windham had to call FairPoint to get the company to transfer calls, which caused delays during the earlier malfunctions.

“It required one call. Now they can avoid that,” said Nevins.

Holmes applauded the installation of the direct switch at the Windham facility, which he said gives his crew more control when handling malfunctions.

“I think it is probably the best progress that could have been made,” he said.

On three separate occasions, it took FairPoint 30 minutes to an hour to complete the transfer of calls to Gray, Holmes said.

“Obviously that is unacceptable,” he said. “Having (the switch) in place has provided a lot of relief.”

Holmes is reassured that the Windham center has not experienced any issues or outages with the 911 system since FairPoint made the changes. But he is concerned after failures last weekend in the 911 system in Penobscot County, which uses a FairPoint system identical to the one in Cumberland County.

The problems in Cumberland County were different than the issues experienced this week in Penobscot County, which were related to the power supply, Nevins said.

Holmes, however, said he is uncertain that the problem in Cumberland County is completely cured, and will continue to watch the system closely, as will the Emergency Services Communications Bureau.

“We’re monitoring constantly (FairPoint’s) efforts to secure the system and make sure that calls are handled quickly and effectively,” said Bureau spokesman Bever.