 xlimitx
join:2001-12-31
Wilkes Barre, PA | Good for WV West Virginia has always had major issues with Verizon since the Bell days and I can definitely see why they would be so hesitant to see this acquisition happen. | |
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 | BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
 ·Comcast
| Re: Good for WV You cant force the company to stay !
If they aren't able to sell off then they will try and make it profitable , meaning higher fees where they can to recoup costs.
I say let them sell and if it fails the government steps up to plate and ingests it. Then the profit can be all government. It's the only way we may see universal broadband , if the government owns the pipes and the providers provide the content.
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"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!" | |
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| | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
 ·AT&T Southeast
| Re: Good for WV said by BosstonesOwn  :You cant force the company to stay ! If they aren't able to sell off then they will try and make it profitable , meaning higher fees where they can to recoup costs. Or completely allow the market to whither and die, sustaining only the minimal amount of service required by law.said by BosstonesOwn :I say let them sell and if it fails the government steps up to plate and ingests it. Then the profit can be all government. Seems optimistic. Do you believe the government is interested in buying a telco? I don't. | |
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| | | patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
| Re: Good for WV said by openbox9 :Seems optimistic. Do you believe the government is interested in buying a telco? I don't. The govt will get a free telco once VZ refuses to pay the PUC fines and VZ WV is foreclosed. | |
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| | | | xlimitx
join:2001-12-31
Wilkes Barre, PA | Re: Good for WV What do you mean when you say Verizon WV is foreclosed? | |
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| | | | | | patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
| Re: Good for WV said by en102 :VZ isn't a house  VZ WV as a VZ company could go to chapter 11/13, but not likely.... or any less likely than Frontier not holding up. Telco old school in rural isn't profitable (anymore), as many have left overpriced POTS service for wireless/cable/voip. Fines can't be discharged in bankruptcy court. PUC will do a plant ownership forfeit/seize if it ever reaches a point of corporate liquidation. PUC can also refuse to let tarrifed services increase in price by saying the fines aren't a justified operating expense/fines must be paid out of profit margin, then again, calculating tarrifed rates is voodoo. | |
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| | | | | | | hottboiinnc
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH
·Time Warner Cable
·buckeye cable
| Re: Good for WV if WV screws the deal up, VZ can under law give notice to the states that it is going to close up and leave the services die. They only have to give 90day notices to the state and that's it.
the PUC gives the ILEC and CLEC the right do that without them selling off. | |
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| | | | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
·AT&T Southeast
| Umm, sure. Care to explain a little more about how the government will get a free telco? What PUC fines is VZ refusing to pay? And as xlimitx asked, what do you mean by foreclosed? | |
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| | | | BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
·Comcast
| said by patcat88 :said by openbox9 :Seems optimistic. Do you believe the government is interested in buying a telco? I don't. The govt will get a free telco once VZ refuses to pay the PUC fines and VZ WV is foreclosed. Exactly.
Once the area withers away , some one will snatch it up. Usually the government will step in.
We need a free market or socialism , we need to choose one , not a mix of both.
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"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!" | |
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| | | | | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
·AT&T Southeast
| Re: Good for WV said by BosstonesOwn :Once the area withers away , some one will snatch it up. Someone is attempting to "snatch it up", but apparently that's not what WV desires. | |
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| | | | | | BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
·Comcast
| Re: Good for WV said by openbox9 :said by BosstonesOwn :Once the area withers away , some one will snatch it up. Someone is attempting to "snatch it up", but apparently that's not what WV desires. I know , I posted that above , however once Verizon lets it in to disarray , another company will snatch it up and be ok'ed , or the government will.
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"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!" | |
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| | | | | | | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA | Re: Good for WV If that's what's required to be allowed to sell off certain markets, I'm sure VZ is willing to play the game. Unfortunately, as much as WV may feel they're doing the right thing, in the end the consumers will be the ones hurt by such action. | |
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xdeadhead
220, 221, Whatever It Takes.
Premium
join:2000-11-08
Mechanicsburg, PA | newsflash!!!!
it is already in disarray. | |
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| | | | | | jjeffeory
join:2002-12-04
USA | That's an oversimplification of what is happening and we can read the reasons why. We need to look at the "why" as well as the "what". Wv is only trying to protect their interests. | |
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| | | | | | Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA
1 edit | said by openbox9 :Someone is attempting to "snatch it up", but apparently that's not what WV desires. Not really, this is part sale and part tax dodge by Verizon. Look at the results of these tax dodges in other states, two bankruptcies and a third on its way. The AG of WV has every right to question this because it will undoubtedly lead to more expense for U. S. taxpayers and poor service in WV.
A Frontier spokesman disputed all of McGraw's criticisms last week, saying the deal would bring better phone service, lower prices, expanded broadband Internet access and possibly more jobs. Right as if we hadn't heard such lies before and we didn't know the inevitable result of Verizon finding some chump and these tax dodges. Verizon's WV network is simply too big for Frontier to swallow and the end won't be any different than those that take out mortgages that they can't afford. | |
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tim_k
Buttons, Bows, Beamer, Shadow, Kasey
Premium
join:2002-02-02
Stewartstown, PA
 ·Millenicom
 ·WildBlue
| Re: Good for WV said by Sammer :A Frontier spokesman disputed all of McGraw's criticisms last week, saying the deal would bring better phone service, lower prices, expanded broadband Internet access and possibly more jobs. In other words, the CEO stands to gain a huge bonus if this goes through and if the company fails, oh well, he got his.
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RIP my babys Buttons 1/15/94-2/9/07 & Beamer 7/24/08, Buttons, Buttons video, Beamer
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| | | hottboiinnc
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH | Why not the Gov't was interested in becoming a bank and a car manufacture. So why not a telco? | |
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| | | | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
·AT&T Southeast
| Re: Good for WV No it wasn't. It did so only out of necessity to help protect the global economy from a meltdown. Besides, there's a huge difference between a company failing under pressure of insurmountable debt, and one that's doing fine, but simply doesn't want to conduct business in certain locations. | |
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| | | | | hottboiinnc
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH
·Time Warner Cable
·buckeye cable
| Re: Good for WV no they bought the companies. Why do you think they're in such a hurry to offload them and Feds are in a pissing match with GM? only because GM said they'd never get their repayment of $$$ that the Feds put in. Even though GM is starting to turn a profit.
GM did NOT need to go and take the money. They could have done what Ford did. Mortgage their logos and their factories to get the money.
AIG, they just wanted to take the $$$$$$ and run. Nothing will never come of these companies and they should tossed into criminal court just like Enron, MCI, Qwest, and Adelphia's CEO's where. | |
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Munichance
@comcast.com
| said by BosstonesOwn :I say let them sell and if it fails the government steps up to plate and ingests it. Then the profit can be all government. It's the only way we may see universal broadband , if the government owns the pipes and the providers provide the content. Hmmm, but wouldn't the Telco's still try to prevent any muni-broadband attempts? | |
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| | | BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
·Comcast
| Re: Good for WV They can try all they want. If the government has to step in and pull the area from the bring to give them service , you can bet for sure they won't let the telcos stomp their feet like angry children.
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"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!" | |
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| | Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA
1 edit | said by BosstonesOwn :You cant force the company to stay ! Fine, Verizon also owns Verizon Business and a majority of Verizon Wireless and if Verizon doesn't want to do business in the state those and any other Verizon business also shouldn't be allowed to stay even in the areas of WV that Verizon is trying to sell that aren't rural at all. | |
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| | | hottboiinnc
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH | Re: Good for WV VZ Business is actually a reseller of services in many areas. especially land line services. they took over MCI which was a reseller as well.
In the end the Gov't could tell VZ "now you pay us XXXX per month to resell our services" | |
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| | | BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
·Comcast
| said by Sammer :said by BosstonesOwn :You cant force the company to stay ! Fine, Verizon also owns Verizon Business and a majority of Verizon Wireless and if Verizon doesn't want to do business in the state those and any other Verizon business also shouldn't be allowed to stay even in the areas of WV that Verizon is trying to sell that aren't rural at all. They are separate companies.
Verizon owns portions of each but they are different companies. You can't just blanket them all.
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"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!" | |
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herdfan
Premium
join:2003-01-25
Hurricane, WV | The big issue for WV is they way it is structured. Of the VZ systems for sale to Frontier, WV is the only one that can't stand on its own.
So the logistics of making the switchover go smoothly are mindboggling. | |
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Hank
Its all relative
Premium
join:2002-05-21
Burlington, WV
1 edit | As a current resident of West Virginia and customer of Frontier the Attorney General is 100% correct. Frontier is just barely able to support their current customer base. Notice I said barely, the level of support that they provided since I have been a customer has diminished drastically. It is at a level that is almost non-existent, ranging from support of their current WV infrastructure to managing their billing system. Frontier will not be able to absorb the additional infrastructure and the customer base that comes with it. They just do not have the management skills (I know it is an accepted practice these days) and financial resources to accept additional expenses. Why place them in a position where in a few months the citizens of this country will be bailing out another company that overstepped its financial bounds. | |
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friscojoe
@bellatlantic.com
| Yeah, verizon has been terrible. They only were the first state to install a digital fiber optic backbone statewide (1993). They pushed and fought hard to get high speed Internet in our schools beginning in 1994, and even wired hundreds with volunteers. Despite vast geographic areas, they have nearly 500 DSL locations, and every serving office. Last time I checked, they were still pushing the envelope, pushing a very very high speed ethernet network and helping the state get its share of broadband stimulus funds. They may not been perfect, but I dare say no one else has come close to their investment or interest in WV. They could have just as easily invested less, done less, contributed less. Didn't. | |
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Karl Bode
News Guy
join:2000-03-02 | Re: Costs on ALL landline systems will continue to rise Time to innovate. Uh oh. | |
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| | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
·AT&T Southeast
| Re: Costs on ALL landline systems will continue to rise Should we innovate by forcing a company to sustain a dieing product in a market which it has no desire be? Doesn't seem very productive or innovative to me. As for the rising costs of landline phone service, what's there to innovate? It's a technology in which more and more people see less utility. Perhaps we should relax the regulations on the phone companies requiring them to service every single address, regardless of the demand for service. | |
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| nonymous
join:2003-09-08
Glendale, AZ
| said by TKJunkMail :Frontier also would likely lose landline customers, prompting the company to raise rates, McGraw predicted in his letter to the PSC. Verizon has lost about a third of its wire line customers across the state in recent years, he said. Guess what? Costs on landlines are going to rise no matter what and no matter who owns it. Fewer & fewer landline customers have to support the FIXED costs of landline infrastructure. And regulators can't stop that from happening. People are moving to wireless like they moved from horses to cars. Higher costs on landlines will help hasten the inevitable and attempts to preserve it at existing prices is doomed to failure. But gov't regulators are very poor at adjusting to the future. They are much better at trying to preserve what they know Yes everyone wants cell phone or wireless for the internet. They love cell caps and overages.
Wireline companies just need to reinvent themselves as dsl pipes. Then add features on that like VOIP with picture etc.
The only reason it is dieing is not that wireless is a better product for everything. The reason is they can nickel and dime you to a ridiculous bill every month with wireless showing investors huge profits.
Hard line home and business DSL can be made profitable. Just nobody would be dumb enough to pay for each extra bit of data like they have become conditioned to with cell and wireless. The companies would have to offer good feature sets at reasonable extra cost like VOIP with picture, data storage etc.
Big wig CEOs only know how to make instant profit with price gouging. We are in a recession yet prices for some stuff seems to be going up. | |
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| | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
·AT&T Southeast
| Re: Costs on ALL landline systems will continue to rise said by nonymous :Wireline companies just need to reinvent themselves as dsl pipes. Then add features on that like VOIP with picture etc. As soon as the regulators allow them to, they might very well do that. | |
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alchav
join:2002-05-17
Palm Desert, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
|  People just don't get it.......Copper is Dead!
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See 7 replies to this post |
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morbo
Complete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000
clubs: | Smart to be very skeptical West Virginia is right to be skeptical of Verizon. They should hold Verizon's feet to the fire to extract as much out of them as possible. Letting them abandon the state to the incompetent Frontier crew is a bad move. | |
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See 7 replies to this post |
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nnaarrnn
join:2004-09-30
Nitro, WV
 ·Vonage
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Suddenlink
| VZ indeed sucks here A friend of mine pays the same price for 3m/768k dsl through verizon that i pay for 12m/1m through suddenlink cable. Sure, his pings are better, but the speeds aren't there. My problem with verizon is that when we have a T-1 go down, unless it's a verizon line (not a clec line) it takes them forever. One took almost a month to get the kinks worked out, which is BS for a t-1 line. Good bye verizon is all I've got to say. The other telcos in the state that have been running their own lines (nTelos, Fibernet) should have the option to take them over. | |
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yolarry
join:2007-12-29
Creston, WV
·HughesNet Satellit..
| Re: VZ indeed sucks here said by nnaarrnn :A friend of mine pays the same price for 3m/768k dsl through verizon that i pay for 12m/1m through suddenlink cable. Sure, his pings are better, but the speeds aren't there. My problem with verizon is that when we have a T-1 go down, unless it's a verizon line (not a clec line) it takes them forever. One took almost a month to get the kinks worked out, which is BS for a t-1 line. Good bye verizon is all I've got to say. The other telcos in the state that have been running their own lines (nTelos, Fibernet) should have the option to take them over. indeed, I went from Verizon to fibernet just because of that stupid directv bill merge thing.
If frontier takes over I hope they open their DSL lines in Calhoun to Wirt County because Hughesnet is a big joke but hey its better then that 20kbps dial up. | |
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WVPJ
@sbcglobal.net
| I live in Proctor WV which I only have VZ dial up service. It really mad me made to find out that VZ were upgrading but has knocked us out of dsl service. You need to be withing 12,000 feet to be able to get dsl. VZ was given the money to do all the upgrades in WV but show they were not going to be able to complete it and chose to sell out. AT&T don't even have a footprint in WV to give us another opition. I live 12 miles from town though unable to received dsl service. My daughter lives 40 mins from town and she has dsl through frontier already. I really think this was an error on VZ part so was easier to add WV to a deal already in place between VZ & Frontier. Frontier wanted WV before they would sign the deal with VZ. I hope WV government will do something for the people. At this point with Dial up service I connect at 26.4 it is really hard to do any business on my computer.  | |
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kp420wv
join:2006-10-24
Fairmont, WV
·ntelos.com
| WV needs to be subsudized by someone Our best hope is that after a large mega company like Verizon gets finished fibering up with every other market they have and decide to finally throw us a bone, absorb the costs of infrastructure because they are swimming in money anyway. A small company like Frontier can only hope to maintain the crap we have now, and will more than likely do a terrible job at it. Just the cost of clearing the trees from the lines has to be obscene.
Getting broadband into every holler is difficult at best, it requires new thinking and technology, which will be deployed somewhere more profitable for a decade before we even smell it. | |
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darcilicious
Cyber Librarian
Premium
join:2001-01-02
Forest Grove, OR
 ·Verizon FIOS
·Comcast
| Re: WV needs to be subsudized by someone said by kp420wv :Our best hope is that after a large mega company like Verizon gets finished fibering up with every other market they have and decide to finally throw us a bone, So in other words, you have no hope at all. Vz is trying to sell off three major markets that already have fiber as well (WA, OR, IN). | |
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Kramer
Premium,Mod
join:2000-08-03
Richmond, VA
clubs: | Smart Honest Guy For all the jokes about West Virginians, this is one smart attorney general. I just wonder if corruption in the state isn't going to make these objections go away one way or another. | |
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| | Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA
3 edits | Re: Smart Honest Guy Well, Verizon selling their WV landlines to Frontier is a tax dodge so taxpayers are going to pay either way. If WV refuses to allow Verizon to sell to Frontier it can take over the service and sell to whoever benefits the taxpayers of WV most rather than it being the best tax dodge for Verizon. The only way the current deal can work out for WV would be for Verizon to leave a trust fund to the state (not Frontier) of at least a couple billion dollars for and only for the improvement of telecommunications infrastructure (not to inevitably bailout Frontier) in West Virginia. | |
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lax2oak
join:2008-10-29
Central Falls, RI
| WV Attorney General Opposes Verizon/Frontier Frontier doesn't have to be Verizon's only choice of selling partner. If they really want to sell WV then let the Att's, Comcast, or any of these other giant communication companies have a shot at buying. As much as everyone believes these rural areas are non-profitable, Me, Vt, and NH were Verizon's most profitable areas when they were sold. | |
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WVPJ
@sbcglobal.net | Re: WV Attorney General Opposes Verizon/Frontier The problem right now is no other company other than Frontier don't have the footprint. They are not allowed in a state with out the footprint. At&T is across the river but can't come over to WV. | |
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WV Attorney General Opposes Verizon/Frontier
Costs on ALL landline systems will continue to rise