PUC Staff Signs on to Revised Verizon-Fairpoint Deal

The deal lets Fairpoint pay 235.5 million dollars less for Verizon’s network than the 2.7 billion dollars it agreed to pay last year.

It also requires Fairpoint to cut its dividend by 35 percent if it actually ends up taking over the phone system.

Fairpoint chairman Gene Johnson says he thinks this deal settles any concerns regulators have had about the company’s financial strength.

Any transaction you do has to be done on terms that works for all the parties. And we think this transaction now works for all the parties in a very, very effective way and a very safe way. So, we feel very comfortable with our dividend payout going forward and our total financial structure going forward.

New Hampshire’s Consumer Advocate says she’s had a quick look at the deal, but needs to examine it further before she could take a position on it.

Meredith Hatfield says she has too many questions to ask before she can make that move.

We’ll look at it as an overall package. Does it reduce the debt enough? Does it provide enough investment for New Hampshire? And what does it do for broadband and service quality?

Verizon has agreed to pay an additional 50 million dollars over two years to pay for phone network upgrades.

Fairpoint has agreed to get broadband to three quarters of New Hampshire’s land lines in just 18 months.

The company has also agreed tocome up with a plan to remove the thousands of double poles in the state.

Still, Robert Erickson of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers says his union can’t support a deal in which PUC staffers have signed on to only minimal changes.

What has happened from the original staff recommendations of , uh, in Maine for instance that the deal needed 600, 700 million dollars less for fairpoint. New Hampshire had….several conditions it wanted to place on the deal.

Unions have said they think Fairpoint’s plan to deploy DSL broadband is also behind the times.

They say that’s because fiber optic lines and even some wireless phones will offer more technologically advanced service.

Unions and the consumer advocate will likely get another chance to share their concerns in the next week or so with PUC commissioners.

After that, commissioners could start deliberating on whether to approve the Verizon- Fairpoint Deal.