Verizon sells rural access lines to Frontier for $8.6B
May 13, 2009
What a deal! Verizon Communications today unveiled plans to dump roughly 14 percent of its expensive copper lines in exchange for $8.6 billion from Frontier Communications. The transaction, which is expected to close within the next year, will make Frontier the nation’s fifth-largest incumbent local exchange carrier with more than 7 million access lines, 8.6 million voice and broadband connections and 16,000 employees in 27 states.
The big winner here is Verizon, which has been trying to sell off its rural access lines for years. It sold 1.5 million of them to Fairpoint in 2007, which is now struggling under the burden. In 2004, Verizon sold its access lines in Hawaii to The Carlyle Group. The resulting Carlyle-created business, Hawaiian Telecom, filed for bankruptcy last year. Buying copper land lines is proving to be a sucker’s game...
What a deal! Verizon Communications today unveiled plans to dump roughly 14 percent of its expensive copper lines in exchange for $8.6 billion from Frontier Communications. The transaction, which is expected to close within the next year, will make Frontier the nation’s fifth-largest incumbent local exchange carrier with more than 7 million access lines, 8.6 million voice and broadband connections and 16,000 employees in 27 states.
The big winner here is Verizon, which has been trying to sell off its rural access lines for years. It sold 1.5 million of them to Fairpoint in 2007, which is now struggling under the burden. In 2004, Verizon sold its access lines in Hawaii to The Carlyle Group. The resulting Carlyle-created business, Hawaiian Telecom, filed for bankruptcy last year. Buying copper land lines is proving to be a sucker’s game...
posted by Connect Ohio at
11:29 AM
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