FairPoint, the company that acquired Verizon's land lines in New England in 2008, filed for bankruptcy on October 26. This news comes as Verizon is seeking approval to sell 4.8 million landlines to Frontier Communications in 14 states. Read More »
With the help of high-resolution video and fast broadband connections, advances in telemedicine are coming rapidly. The use of broadband technology in health care is becoming more widespread everyday. Read More »
Verizon's plan to sell off $8.6 billion worth of broadband assets to Frontier Communications has no shortage of opposition. The proposed merger spans across 14 states and is subject to approval by the FCC and 10 state utility commissions. Read More »
The opposition to the proposed sale of 4.8 million Verizon landlines to Frontier Communications is growing. State utility advocates, consumer groups, state officials, and unions have all raised serious concerns about the deal. Read More »
The proposed deal that would allow Verizon to sell its landlines to Frontier Communications in 14 states has citizens, unions, and local officials all concerned. Read More »
Colorado launched a website to gather public input to measure and map the penetration saturation of high-speed Internet throughout the state. The state government and the non-profit organization and Speed Matters partner, Connected Nation, collaborated to develop the website - http://www.connectcolorado.org. Read More »
Both public and private entities are successfully bringing broadband services to previously unserved or underserved residents in Ohio and the Appalachia area. Recently, a partnership between the state of Ohio and AT&T brought broadband access to several southern Ohio communities. Read More »
Earlier this month, the Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel filed comments with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio opposing Verizon's proposed sale of its rural access lines to Frontier Communications. Verizon is abandoning rural America and leaving a broad swath of destruction in its wake. Verizon sold its telephone lines in Hawaii. The result: consumers received terrible service quality and Hawaiian Telecom went bankrupt. Verizon sold its lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to tiny FairPoint. The result: terrible service quality and FairPoint is nearly bankrupt. Verizon spun off Idearc - its Yellow Pages operation. The result: bankruptcy. The August 11th Wall Street Journal stated "In all, these companies have lost upward of $13 billion in value and counting." The Journal continued "...[Verizon's CEO] extracted prices that literally sucked the life out of the buyers." Read More »
Rural communities throughout the nation have been hit especially hard by the economic downturn. And one key to attracting new businesses and creating jobs is technology. Congressman Zack Space (OH) and Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito (WV) have partnered to introduce the Rural Information Technology Investment Act, a piece of legislation that seeks to rebuild the economies of rural regions for the 21st century. And last week, CWA announced its support of the legislation. Read More »
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia recently gathered 400 business, government and nonprofit leaders at Piedmont Virginia Community College to discuss opportunities for using federal stimulus money for broadband in Virginia. Businesses, individuals, and politicians alike stressed the need and importance of broadband access in communities for all different types of business and educational advancements. In addition to broadband access expansion, part of the federal dollars will be put towards innovation using existing broadband Internet connections. Read More »
