Tell the FCC: Stop the Sale of Verizon to FairPoint http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/verizon_sale?rk=Qp%5fLzuK1G5HlE
Communication Commission (FCC) will decide whether to approve the sale of Verizon's land lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to North Carolina-based FairPoint Communications. The sale gives Verizon an easy way to abandon its less profitable rural landline customers, while retaining more profitable wireless and large business customers. Verizon picked tiny FairPoint because of an obscure tax loophole that allowed them to avoid paying up to $700 million on the sale! If approved, the proposed Verizon sale to FairPoint sets a dangerous precedent with national implications for all rural areas. Fill out your name and address information to tell to the Federal Communication Commission to Stop the Sale!* Note: After this petition is submitted to the FCC it will be publicly available. *To protect yourself, if you are an employee of Verizon or FairPoint working in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont, please do not sign or send this email to the FCC. Tell me more: What's At Stake? http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/verizon_sale/explanation Full Petition Text: The FCC should deny FairPoint's proposed acquisition of Verizon's telephone operations in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont because it would not serve the public interest. FairPoint, a small, highly leveraged firm will not have the financial or technical resources required to successfully conduct these operations. Approval of the transaction would not only place consumers, workers and communities at significant risk but would also set a bad precedent for the whole country. FairPoint is just not up to the task. Its shaky finances pose significant concerns and risks. It will add $1.7 billion in debt and use the cash provided by the acquired operations to primarily pay for dividends and further acquisitions--instead of adequately funding existing operations and infrastructure. FairPoint's operational and managerial capacity also is inadequate. Management would have to deal with a 614 percent increase in access lines and a 333 percent increase in employees. Moreover, there is a significant risk that FairPoint will run into delays and cost overruns when it replaces Verizon's 600 operational, administrative and support systems, further undermining its ability to serve the public. When companies like FairPoint run into problems they usually cut back on labor costs and capital expenditures while attempting to increase rates. Customers end up paying more for worse service. Communities would suffer from reduced broadband build out. Approval of the FairPoint sale by the FCC would also send a signal encouraging other large telephone companies to sell off their rural operations to much smaller companies that do not have the resources or capacity to improve services or provide truly high speed broadband. The Commission should deny the transaction because the public interest risks overwhelm any supposed benefits. To sign the petition: http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/verizon_sale?rk=Qp%5fLzuK1G5HlE _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.isoc-ny.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
