It looks like an end game in legacy copper communications is playing out. On Friday, Verizon received approval from the FCC to sell off its wireline operations in 14 states to Frontier Communications: Arizona, California, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.
The affected subscribers are concentrated in rural, low density areas and small cities. The FCC attached a few weak, purely voluntary conditions on Frontier for this transfer of 4.8 million lines.
The most significant (this is a relative term) is that Frontier will to need to upgrade 85% of these lines to broadband speeds of 3 Mbps downstream and 4 Mbps for uploads.
Currently only 62% of lines that Verizon is selling are broadband-capable today.
You kind of hope now that Google will pick a California in-land city as a winner of its Fiber to the Communities project.
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- FCC clears Verizon plan to sell phone lines (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Frontier’s Purchase of 4.8 Million Verizon Lines Cleared by FCC (businessweek.com)
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