FairPoint Communications - Top Telecom Turkeys of 2009

Why is it a turkey?  
Some things as they say may look good on paper, but in practice they don't work. Case in point is FairPoint Communications' acquisition of Verizon's New England voice lines.  
 
Not long after FairPoint did make the switch from Verizon's back office to its own OSS systems last January, the honeymoon ended when it failed to properly switch [1] 285,000 former Verizon Communications customers.

But those problems were just the tip of the iceberg. And as customer problems began to escalate in its residential, business and wholesale operations, the three public Utility Commission's in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont called FairPoint executives to the carpet to explain themselves in an executive session in September. Vermont even went so far as to investigate whether the ILEC should continue [2] to be allowed to do business in its state, while the Maine PUC ordered [3] FairPoint to pay $400,000 in fines for poor wholesale service to competitive local service providers.

Of course, the telco did try to make some changes.  
 
There was the proverbial management shuffling where it not only reassigned [2] some executives and then added a new head of business solutions with promises of a turnaround.

But all of these changes and promises of fixing the problems and a heavy debt load did little to prevent the company from falling into the arms of Chapter 11 protection [4]. Unfortunately, the FairPoint debacle has set a bit of a tough precedent for fellow ILEC Frontier who is also pursuing an even larger acquisition of Verizon lines.