May
3
West Virginia To Likely Approve Verizon/Frontier Deal This Week – Leaving only a few small FCC conditions left to hash out…
Last week Illinois regulators (with a little personal last-minute help from Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and some Verizon talking points) approved Verizon’s $8.5 billion plan to offload millions of phone and DSL customers to Frontier Communications. The deal was approved despite protests from a state Judge and her 47-page report — highlighting very clearly how only really Verizon benefits from the deal, given it infuses Frontier with so much debt next-gen upgrades or expansion will likely take a back seat for some time. With Illinois out of the way, Frontier and Verizon lobbyists only have West Virginia and the FCC to worry about. In West Virginia, unions have put up a tough fight — but now appear relegated to using delay tactics:
Of course as we’ve seen with other Verizon deals of this type (Hawaiian Telcom and Fairpoint) the companies that acquire unwanted Verizon infrastructure in these Reverse Morris Trust deals are so overloaded with debt and new subscribers they can sometimes barely answer the phone — much less expand or upgrade infrastructure. Despite union opposition West Virginia should approve deal this week. After that, all that will be left will be a few largely-meaningless FCC conditions regulators may or may not actually bother to enforce.
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Related posts:
- Frontier gets West Virginia approval for Verizon rural line purchase
- West Virginia Approves Verizon/Frontier deal – Only the FCC remains….
- Verizon-Frontier deal gets FCC approval
- Unions, Frontier Square Off On West Virginia Upgrades – Union Wants ‘Seat At The Table’ In Upgrade Decisions
- Verizon to pay $72.4 million to improve West Va.’s PSTN service
Original story here.