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By TUX TURKEL
MaineToday Media, Inc. 01/04/2008

The three commissioners voted to approve the sale after an exhaustive, 12-hour session, and only after FairPoint made significant financial concessions designed to reduce its debt after the $2.7 billion sale.

Regulators in Vermont and New Hampshire, and the Federal Communications Commission, also must give their approvals for the sale to become final. Verizon and FairPoint hope to close by Jan. 31.

The case before the PUC was considered among the most important telecommunications decisions facing the agency in a generation. The outcome and its conditions will affect virtually every home and business customer that now has telephone or Internet services from Verizon.

Verizon is Maine's dominate local telephone service provider. It owns more than 600,000 access lines roughly 85 percent of Maine's total. These lines also support Internet access for thousands of home and business customers.

Among the conditions:

n FairPoint will reduce the rate for basic home and business telephone service by more than $4 a month, for at least five years.

The rate now is $19.29 a month.

n FairPoint will make high-speed Internet service available to 83 percent of all lines within two years, and 90 percent over five years.

n Prices for existing Verizon high-speed DSL service will be frozen at $15 with a two-year contract and $18 with a one year contract, for at least two years.

n FairPoint also will have to meet strict service quality standards, or face increasing financial penalties.

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