SubscribeYesterday, Stop the Cap! examined the rationale for Verizon to spin away hundreds of thousands of customers to a small independent telephone company, FairPoint Communications. In today’s report, the utility commissions that protect ratepayers in three New England states ponder the proposal. WMUR-TV in Manchester offers a nice summary of the issues involved, and the Josiah Bartlett they reference isn’t the one from NBC’s The West Wing, but rather the sixth governor of New Hampshire!
- Would the merger improve the chances for New England’s smaller communities to enjoy better service, particularly with high speed broadband that Verizon never rolled out;
- Was FairPoint financed sufficiently to handle the dramatic increase in its customer base?
Vermont decided the FairPoint takeover in their state was likely to be unsustainable, with insufficient guarantees that the company would have the money to get the job done. WPTZ-TV, which serves Vermont, covered the announcement on December 21, 2007:
Unfortunately, as Stop the Cap! readers have come to learn again and again, one defeat doesn’t mean the end of the war. FairPoint had the opportunity to digest the input from state regulatory bodies and return with a new proposal. The question is, would that proposal simply put out small fires started by state authorities concerned about a few isolated factors, or would it be a complete overhaul to provide better guarantees that a FairPoint taking over phone service in three states in 2008 would still be in business in 2009.
Tomorrow, FairPoint has a new plan.
