KEYSER — While members of the Communications Workers of America appealed to the Mineral County Commission this week to oppose Verizon's bid to sell its West Virginia operations to the much smaller Frontier, representatives of the two communications companies defended the sale by saying it would not adversely affect the service provided to residents of the state.
John Johnston, speaking on behalf of the CWA, told the commissioners that the union feels the sale to Frontier will resulted in deterioration of service to the residents of the state.
Citing what he called Verizon's “past track record” of transactions, he said in at least three sales which previously occurred in other states, the smaller companies which purchased Verizon's operations “ended up filing bankruptcy.”
He fears the same will happen with Frontier.
“Frontier will wind up taking on at least $3.4 billion in debt from Verizon,” he said. “If Frontier goes bankrupt in West Virginia, you will lose phone service.”
Johnston also questioned the future of broadband Internet service.
“Frontier has said they'll expand broadband, but will they? With $3.4 billion in debt, that's a lot of money,” he said.
Johnston said the CWA has been trying to “push for more broadband to be in more and more counties” in West Virginia, but the workers “don't feel we're going to get the push that's been promised.”
Chuck Fouts, local CWA president, said he fears that jobs may also be lost if the sale is approved by the Public Service Commission.
“If you go bankrupt, the first thing that goes is people,” he said.
Fouts said, rather than approve the sale to Frontier, the CWA has been trying to “get Verizon to do what they said they were going to do.”
According to Johnston, Verizon has not wanted to invest money in Fios, or fiber-based high-speed Internet, in West Virginia because it is a rural state.
“They want to invest in the cities where you can put a thousand feet of cable in and you serve a lot of people,” he said. “Here, you put in a thousand feet of cable and you might serve one person.”
According to John Golden of Verizon, however, Frontier is just the company needed to help develop a rural state like West Virginia.
“They know rural markets ... they know West Virginia and they believe strongly that it is a place where they can grow their business,” he told the commissioners.
Rick Welch, a member of the county's Communications Infrastructure Council, said the economic future of Mineral County depends upon high speed or fiberoptic Internet and not dsl, or Internet service which utilizes existing telephone lines.
“DSL will not bring anything to Mineral County as far as economic development is concerned,” he said, noting that most technology-based businesses are dependent upon the higher speed service.
Golden disagreed.
“To hear you say that dsl is not the future is troubling,” he said. “If you are without broadband, dsl would be the future.”
Commission President Wayne Spiggle, who also serves on the CIC, took issue with that statement.
“You're going to have to persuade me that dsl level broadband is going to attract the kind of businesses we're looking at for Mineral County,” he said.
“There are a lot of businesses, people who work from home, that would not consider coming to Mineral County.
“Our mission and responsibility to Mineral County is to create an entrepreneurial garden, and high-speed broadband is essential to that,” he said.
Paul Espinosa, general manager of Frontier, told the group his company “prides ourselves in taking good care of our customers,” nad that 95 percent of their current residential customers do have broadband internet.
“In some areas it's dsl. In other markets we do offer fiber,” he said.
Frontier currently offers metro ethernet in Hampshire, Hardy and Grant counties, he said.
Spiggle asked if what Frontier is currently offering “is modern broadband that is affordable to the public.”
“The cost is very competitive,” Espinosa said.
Noting that Frontier has traditionally achieved its growth through the acquisition of other companies, he said he “feels confident that the PSC will come to the conclusion that this (sale) is a good thing for West Virginia.”
Keyser, W.Va. —
