Verizon's Leaving A Trail Of Bankrupt Wreckage Behind Them → hmmmm....

When is this $hit going to end and politicians wise up, oh wait, never. We just need to BOATI. Telco fan boyz, Verizon shareholders chime in.

I agree that what Verizon is doing is unethical, but who is forcing these independent telcos to buy out pieces of the Verizon network? Why are they doing it if Verizon is apparently the only one to benefit?

Mindless investor pressure to grow, mixed with executives whose eyes are too big for their stomachs. Granted, they're dumb too for thinking they can quadruple their size, dump billions in debt into their books, and then take the support hit without losing stride...

The market punishes the dumb with something called bankruptcy.

I'm no fan of Verizon, but what they are doing is not illegal nor can I see how its unethical. If I put my rusty old 1983 F-150 out on my front yard with a FOR SALE sign, and the terms of the sale are that you pay me $500 cash and you acquire responsibility for my home mortgage, and you agree to the deal, well then you are an idiot, but you weren't conned into it, it was upfront and open and you agreed to do the deal of your own free will. The buyer must assume responsibility for his purchase, even when the deal goes south and the risk doesn't pay off.

Disclaimer: I neither own nor have a rusty old 1983 F-150 for sale.

Economics doesn't exist anymore in it's purist form.

The market punishes politicians by not funding them to get elected. Thus bail outs and size problems. Thus when a business becomes too big, it should naturally shake apart - not get fixed up because it's grown so large that its failure is a bomb to the economy.

Like the market punished all those banks we just bailed out?Was your rusty 1983 F-150 subsidized by taxpayers and tied to an entire complex web of community dependencies? These deals are not simple sale transactions of rusty trucks.

That said, I completely agree that Fairpoint executives were idiots. And if the plan involved collusion with Verizon to intentionally dissolve this debt in post-deal bankruptcy, they're thieves who ripped off other businesses and consumers. And idiots.

I am surprized that no one has figured out that bankruptcy is actually a part of the plan.

Your very naive to put it nicely.

I think you're exactly right. Bankruptcy is indeed part of the "spinoff" plan. They KNOW it will go through bankruptcy and get its debts discharged, thus the original creditors are saddled with the loss while the telco gets to "reorganize" and continue in business.

That went out the window during the Reagan administration.

*ding* *ding* *ding* *ding*

We have a winner. You can bet that this was the plan all along. Assume a crushing debt load, dump it in bankruptcy court as necessary to continue service to all these customers, and then resume business as usual.

You'd think that the usual pundit suspects would have noticed, but they are too busy throttling Verizon.

If the plan all along was to use post-deal bankruptcy as a way to rip-off creditors and consumers (certainly possible -- though also completely illegal), Verizon was well aware of it -- which still makes them all look like unethical scumbags.

What I don't understand, and not faulting Verizon is why do companies think they can succeed where others have failed? Someone needs to stop this madness

But the "buyer" isn't a person who suffers consequences. Its a corporation. Just start another one. The humans behind the corporation have no liability for anything the corporation does in bankruptcy.

Which type of bankruptcy was declared as the article did not make that clear. A business can file for either Chapter 11 reorganization which would result in the business paying off its debts on an agreed sum on the dollar owed.

It could also file for Chapter 7 which would mean that it is going out of business completely and all dischargeable debts are wiped out with certain exceptions .

everyone who looked at the deal knowing that it was no good; MerrillLynch even sd "if they do it they're dead, If they dont do it they're dead." (THEY=FAIRPOINT)

the asshole politicians will continue to take money until we elect a normal person who has never had anything to do with the dark force of washington.

when we get a real human being who does not like MONEY and is happy with a little not a lot then we might see a better place.

i love my country but i hate this corrupt goverment.

WIndstream and CenturyTel seem to be doing decently in rural areas, but likely balked at the price Verizon placed on the Frontier deal...if I remember correctly we're talking about upwards of $4000 per customer. You could roll out FTTH to everyone with that kind of money!

Yea, same thinking as all those people who couldnt pay their mortgage and are getting bailed out. NOBODY forced them to buy those houses with STUPID loan conditions and nobody FORCED anyone to buy out Verizons crap areas. This is just a ridiculous lawsuit considering everything verizon has done is LEGAL .

If there was intent to file for bankruptcy, couldn't they be sued for investor fraud?

This.

Moreover, in Hawaii, I fully expect Verizon to reenter at some point (maybe as far out as 10 years) with a wireless solution of some sort. They retained their cellular presence, after all.

Our options are quite limited right now... DSL that maxes out at 3mbps in most COs and cable that barely beats that. We have Clearwire but caps, price and latency make it a bit unattractive, IMO.

I don't fault Verizon for wanting to do this... I don't expect altruism or ethics from that kind of company. The entities that allowed the sale to proceed? Grossly derelict in their duties.

Any idea how much money Hawaiian Telcom and Fairpoint execs made during their implosions? I'm guessing it's a hefty sum.

Never, now get back to making as much money as fast as possible.

Yes and no they need to prove and that is very hard in court, and don't forget Verizon is not you or me, it has million and millions to throw at the court system.

Even if after all that something is found it still does not mean anything will change, just that maybe one or two people will see some prison time but since this is not drugs the bane of America, like this is not a bigger bane I asked a friend about what kind of time they would see, from of the top of his head he would say maybe 3 years top for prison and that is not worth the 10 of million they would spend going after anyone.

No real way to fix this problem unless congress gets some balls and that is not going to happen any time soon if ever.

This is america after all, just be a legal crook and forget everything else its all bull any way.

Lets just hope the Justice Dept stays clueless.

LOL independent. HAHAHA. LOL. You think these companies don't know what they are getting into? Taking a fall for the big guy more like it. Staged. Made up.

Telephone (copper phone lines) carriers are regulated by the government, and are required to provide phone services no matter what.. doesn't matter if they go bankrupt, they are required by law to continue to run.. If they can't then they have to find someone to take them over or something so that phone services continue to run normal. Verizon is hurting from Fios.. But Fios is un-regulated, which is why Verizon wants to go in that direction even though they haven't made a profit form it yet... its costing soo much to do Fios and that coupled with un-forseen issues that have overloaded their budget for such things like ants loving to eat the fiber lines, which then causes them to replaced them much sooner than they predicted. causing them to spend even more money to replace.. just they budgeted x amount of dollars for possible issues that may arise, and unfortunatly the issues that came up have caused 2+ times that amount of costs.. Too bad - Fios has limits and costs too much.. I guess we can see why cable providers which use hyrbid fiber/coax don't change from FTTN to FTTH. Besides Fiber has fixed bandwidth limit, and Coax limit of bandwidth is only based on the technology (ex. Docsis 2, 3) so coax has an advantage.

So fiber has an total fixed limit and coax doesn't? That doesn't make sense. They both are limited based on the terminating technology, but fiber can carry a hell of a lot more bandwidth. They are already testing technology that can push 10 gigs over a pon trunk (then split to 32 or 64 homes). I'd like to see coax do that.

Also, why would ants choose fiber over the other buried lines, cable coax or copper phone lines? Most of Verizon's fiber is aerial, so I don't foresee them running into any problems they haven't had already with their copper lines.

Who accused Verizon of being ethical?