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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!
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
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.