(HOST) The Public Service Board will decide soon on whether it will allow the sale of Verizon’s phone lines to FairPoint Communications. And Commentator Tim McQuiston thinks that, whatever the ruling, it’s only fair that the PSB gets to make the call.
(MCQUISTON) Sometime in the near future, the phone bill most of us are used to receiving will have a FairPoint logo on it. This is inevitable. Verizon wants out. And most business development folks, private and public, want Verizon out, too. Verizon simply isn’t interested in putting more money into its northern New England network. There’s just not much profit in it. Verizon wants to focus on urban areas.
FairPoint is willing to pay a lot of money for the Vermont New Hampshire and Maine franchise, and in return will be required to extend high-speed Internet service. So the sale of Verizon’s landlines to FairPoint is pretty much a done deal, except for the approval, and it has nothing to do with the folksy ads with the somewhat awkward accents. It’s just logical.
Having said that, however, there’s a notion out there in the Vermont business world that the Verizon-FairPoint deal should be allowed to go through simply because any business should have the right to sell to another. Just as any greengrocer should be able to sell kohlrabi to any customer. In most cases, I would agree with that. This, however, is not most cases.
Many years ago, when the government was interested – on behalf of the common good – in extending telephone service to everywhere in the country, the service providers were allowed monopoly territories. Such was also the case with electric service.
Private businesses were allowed to operate monopolies to encourage them – and indeed require them – to provide service. The trade off was that they would be regulated by the government.
However, between cell phones, cable, fiber optics, wireless services, and compact satellite dishes, the future of traditional copper telephone landlines is limited, and their value is lessening.
But they’re still vital. So, those thousands of miles of Verizon’s landlines in Vermont are still very important. And the government has a legitimate say in whether this transaction will go through. Verizon’s ancestors signed on to the concept of the regulated monopoly. In essence, they sold their free-market soul. They have to live with that, as we all must.
The Vermont Public Service Board could decide at any time, but most likely their ruling will come toward the end of this year. Typically, the PSB would allow such a transaction with very strict conditions, such as extension of DSL and guarantees about certain service and reliability issues.
But, like it or not, the regulators do have a say. That was the intent of the original deal. And a deal’s a deal. Right?
Timothy McQuiston is editor of Vermont Business Magazine.