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Verizon Sells Off Rural Lines
ffejie writes "Verizon has announced that it will be spinning off rural assets to FairPoint Communications. These include all assets in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The deal will close sometime in 2007 and is worth $2.7 billion. 1.6 million phone lines, 234,000 DSL subscribers, and 600,000 long-distance customers will be moved to FairPoint in Verizon's effort to shed its low-margin lines in rural areas. The sale has been rumored since the summer at least. With Verizon aggressively rolling out high-speed FiOS (FTTP) in its service area, what will happen to the consumers stuck with a smaller telco like those moving to FairPoint?"
They get better service?
Big telcos like Verizon tend to focus on large population areas first, because that's where the money is. Which means that the major cities get more options and better service while Bob Newhart over in Middlebury, Vermont can forget about ever getting Fiber service. In fact, I'd guess that the sale of the rural lines in these areas are being done specifically so that Verizon doesn't have to deploy FiOS as promised.
In comparison, a small company like Fairpoint is going to have to focus on the customers they've got. Which means either making them happy, or losing the business to local Co-Ops setup to provide the missing services.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I don't know anything about FairPoint, but when I went to a small 13,000 household telco my service improved greatly. Prices went up a bit, but only a few percent and my service has been great.
Not sure, but do you know any "larger telcos" that do anything but s*** on their residential customers? My best experiences with phone and data services have been with "regional" providers; the only reason I gave up my last one was that I moved to an area where the only two choices were AT&T and Charter (lose lose).
This means they anticipate a Democratic-leaning FCC in the coming years. By creating structural seperation for the markets where they don't want to roll out FiOS, they insulate themselves from the impact of a ruling to the effect that they have to roll out service in an equitable manner.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Great! Now I'll have to go all the way to Fairpoint Station to pay my bill. That's way out in the boonies!
Unions are fighting this one because it will mean a further decline in wages in the industry if all those workers go non-union. That's bad for everyone if the rich keep getting richer. See http://stop-the-sale.org/ for their arguments.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Vermonters often prefer local smaller business, cooperatives, and the like, to the national chains and providers. They do an excellent job up there of doing things their own way. Having FairPoint instead of Verizon will hopefully mean a telco that will work more closely with local government to provide innovate services that reach everyone. The big telcos have fought against things like municpal networks in the past. I don't think they will be missed.
You know why they pay $69? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT IT COSTS!
It is a mistake to warp economics so that all customers pay the same price even though some customers cost far more to serve than others. If the telco company has to run and service two miles of cable to provide service to you but only has to run and service 100 feet of cable to provide service to me, you should pay more than I do.
paintball
I live in Marshfield, VT, and I have been well-served by FairPoint for years. I've had a DSL connection for over a year, and the speed keeps increasing at no extra costs.
The few times decades ago I was serviced by NYNEX (now Verizon) and it sucked. You'll be much better off with FairPoint, in my experience.
I think the rural areas should just shut the water off to the big cities for a week as a test case and renegotiate the "socialist" water you receive at highly subsidised rates. How would you superior advanced urbanites like to pay
"what the free market will bear" for your tap water? Ten a gallon sound OK to you? Or do you have your own personal water well in the basement of your condo? Then the rural folks could afford some things better if we ended the urban socialist subsidy.. Oh, food? let's do the same with all the roads that bring you in the food, let's start and stop tolls at every property line. thinkl your chinese takeout will be so cheap then? Rail? Same deal. Your electrical supply? Runs on wires running on land seized from rural people, with no compensation to them at all, let alone any fair market rate. How about we just assume all that property is owned by rural people like it used to be and make your electricity company pay for transit, on an individual owner by owner basis. think you'll be running your oh so effin important "home theater and network" 24/7 anymore then? If you paid true free market rates,with no regulations and no socialist intervention, you couldn't afford anything past one 60 watt ligtbulb in your upscale uptown digs because it would quickly become a closed cartel for service.
Frankly, you are just a spoiled urban retard, an obnoxious drool, which unfortunately is too common in our society and which you can always see on slashdot when the rural connectivity issue comes up-yes, a combination of low IQ trying to cope with gross negligent ignorance at the same time- one of those who doesn't even have an inkling, not clue one, of how things work.
I bet you think packaged groceries grow in the back of your local deli, that starbucks keeps coffee trees in their closet, and that your high score on some videogame simulator means you can now really operate a helicopter.
For those who know nothing about FairPoint Communications. Their strategy is to buy up markets that no one else wants to serve and operate them for as cheaply as possible. Quality of Service will not go up...it will go down in a huge way. I work in one of their tech support call centers. We used to be their exclusive tech support for all of their subscribers, however their service was so bad it was costing us money since we have a standard monthly billing, we ended up telling to them to take a hike. One market had about 60% of their subscribers calling in every month. Every time it rained everyone lost sync on their modem. That properties' tech support has been outsourced overseas. The worst Fairpoint property my company still handles has 976 subs. We plan for 390 of those calling in each month. Our overall average for Fairpoint companies is about 25% of their customers calling in for internet support each month.