After acquiring Verizon's Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont DSL and landline networks for $2.3 billion, Fairpoint Communications subsequently imploded under the debt load, created a multi-state crisis by bungling 911 service for months, missed all agreed to broadband expansion promises, could barely provide dial tone or broadband service to thousands of customers, couldn't answer the phone when they called, and then stumbled into bankruptcy. The company's CEO then tried to pretend that the real problem was bloggers and perception. As a nice follow up, consumers and Fairpoint business customers saw neither refunds or money owed.

Despite bankruptcy and their own incompetence at providing service, Fairpoint still found the time and funds to lobby Maine lawmakers to try and derail a public-private partnership between the University of Maine and Biddleford Internet Corporation (also known as GWI) aimed at trying to shore up broadband coverage gaps across Maine. Despite Maine's abysmal broadband penetration, Fairpoint continues to convince lawmakers they should pass bills that ban this partnership from expanding broadband across the State, according to Bangor Daily News:Of course while busy riling up the locals about the evil dangers of a University expanding broadband into places Fairpoint won't (which as we all know is just a hop and a skip from Communism and bread lines), Fairpoint lobbyists continue to forget to mention that the effort their fighting is a public-private partnership -- the kind free marketeers and ISPs usually praise as a viable alternative to pure government involvement. Fairpoint also strangely forgets to mention they themselves have failed miserably at broadband expansion.

So again: why exactly does Fairpoint have any say in how Maine wires itself for broadband service?