Shedding more light on Verizon's unfair FairPoint deal

We've already explained how Verizon's proposed $2.7 billion sale of local lines in Vermont is a bad deal for residents of New England. The plan is getting plenty of scrutiny in New England, and now former CWA staffer Steve Early has contributed a thorough analysis to The Nation's website: 

Verizon's proposed $2.7 billion transfer of local access lines to FairPoint Communications--a small, largely nonunion North Carolina firm--is part of a nationwide trend toward rural telecom redlining. Everywhere it can, Verizon is trying to abandon "low-value" landline customers and is focusing instead on building its wireless customer base and investing billions of dollars in a new "FIOS" service.
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While "high-value" customers in these areas move into the fast lane of the information superhighway, the contested sale to FairPoint would leave northern New Englanders far behind. Residential customers--not to mention schools, businesses, hospitals and emergency responders--will still be dependent on "dirt-road dial-up" for their Internet access or, at best, will move into the slow lane of digital subscriber line (DSL) service, a technology that some regard as outdated and prohibitively expensive for rural economic development.

On the Seven Days website, Ken Picard addresses many of the same issues.

Early's Nation piece also raises the critical question of why FairPoint was chosen by Verizon as its buyer. The answer, it turns out, is that a tax loophole would allow Verizon to save $600 million in taxes, as long as its infrastructure is sold in pieces to small firms, as opposed to larger, more stable ones that have the capacity to invest in improved service.

So, while Verizon banks hundreds of millions in tax savings, the very people who pay those taxes in New England are being hung out to dry.

The Point? It's Not Fair. (Speed Matters)

The Proposed FairPoint Purchase of Verizon's Properties Would Place Consumers, Workers, and Communities at Risk (Speed Matters)

Verizon-FairPoint deal gets more scrutiny (Boston Globe)

Broadband Redlining Targets Rural America (The Nation)

Strike Up the Broadband (Seven Days)