said by ISurfTooMuch
:My guess is that they're going to put themselves on the market soon, either publicly or in a hush-hush way. Shortly after that, they'll get bought out.
As to who will do the buying, my guesses, in order of likliehood, are:
1. CenturyTel (or CenturyLink, whoever they are now)
2. Frontier
3. AT&T
4. Verizon
If the buyer is Verizon, I'd predict they'll wait until FairPoint goes into bankruptcy so they don't have to take on as much debt. That way, they'd get those areas back and make a nice profit in the selling off and buying back, then they could turn around and sell the whole thing again.
So here in our locale, Verizon sold off the outside copper and local C.O.'s but kept the Cellular and Long Distance. Guess who the buyer is TA-DA, Fairpoint.